rage lite

I had the very odd experience of waking up in an empty house this morning. Ady had taken the children with him to go and collect his car at about 745am and somehow they’d failed to make enough noise to wake me before they went so I remained fast asleep until the alarm went off at 8am. Very strange to be getting up, dressed and leave the house without anyone to say goodbye to. I left them a note instead :).

Work was fine, Saturday mornings are fairly busy. I spent some time chatting to the new Saturday girl who is 16 and wants to be an actress about performing arts – it’s odd to think I actually am old enough to be the mother of these mini-adults and realise how little I relate to them in many ways. I’m in a sort of limbo of being a parent and responsibilities so certainly not on their wavelength, but also not considering myself written off yet in the way that they so clearly percieve people over 30 (and indeed I did too in my teens). I had my teabreak with Tom, the other Saturday Assistant who is about to have his 18th birthday and attend his interview for London College of Fashion which he is very nervous and excited about, so we chatted about 18th birthday celebrations (how can mine have been *so* long ago when it feels like mere moments? :lol:) and university and interviews. I can’t offer uni anecdotes but I do have a fair few Very Scary Interview Tales to tell. I’ve been thinking about uni a lot this last week after one of the exercises at writing group, chatting to Caz and Bid and then again to Tom today…. interesting stuff.

I did another display, this time a very small one behind the kiddie pc in the junior section. So I pulled out some picture books with actions songs, nursery rhymes and ‘can you roar like a tiger?’ type themes, colour photocopied and reduced the front covers, copied some of the pictures of children doing actions from inside them and then displayed them all under the big heading ‘Picture Books – not just for sitting down quietly with…’ and put all the books on top so people can borrow them from the display. I went round and filled up the various displays I’ve done around the library and put a few more little ones up and moved a couple of shelves. I’m utterly in my element having free rein to do stuff like that as I know from retail days how receptive people are to suggestion and the power of ‘selling a book by it’s cover’ so to spend time doing all the twiddly bits of display and then see the gaps where people have been attracted by them and borrowed them is fab :). The Children’s Librarian was on duty today so we chatted a bit about chapter books and non illustrated children’s books which was interesting. She has two boys of very similar age to Davies and Scarlett but also very strong links to the schools locally and various other educational links so is an interesting person to talk to about children and literacy as she has both personal experience and the ‘official line’.

I finished at 1pm and came home to find twilight zone of an empty house fully flushed away and all three of my family home and in their rightful noisy places :). D and S were watching The Simpson Movie and playing with geomags, Ady was about to go and chop up wood. I had some lunch and then did some baking. Scarlett and I made flapjacks – she did most of it and then I’d offered to just supervise and read out the recipe for Snickerdoodles and for D and S to actually bake them themselves but Davies got caught up doing something with Ady instead so Scarlett and I did those too. She was great – and way better than me at remembering to take them out of the oven :lol:. We talked about catalysts and melting temperatures and speeds when she noted that the sugar melted far quicker than the butter, but the butter melted faster when you stirred it round than when you left it alone. It’s interesting to watch the differences of a second child as I often hear Davies answering questions for her or telling her stuff and of course she is present for almost all of his rather more sophisticated questions and my answers anyway so doesn’t always get the chance to ask her own or make clever observations. Also she is more self contained anyway and quite likes to work things out for herself and then just clarify she’s right rather than ask in the first place. But today she asked me about how the first people got made and why people might commit suicide so she’s still right up there with her share of thorny ones when the mood takes her! I talked a bit about creationism and evolution theories and promised to read her ‘Life Story‘ which I’ll do tomorrow, and probably get out Earth Story to go along with it.

Scarlett’s DS has had a non continuous line on the upper screen for the last week or so which I noticed is getting worse. I’ve certainly seen no signs of abuse, if anything she is more careful with hers than Davies is with his and the outer casing and screen surface were still totally as new. I googled it last night and found a probable cause listed as it being dropped or otherwise impacted but particularly as it is on the top screen where she doesn’t touch anyway I really think it is more likely to be a fault with the DS rather than mishandling. So given it is not even a month old andwas £100 and is only likely to get worse we decided to take it back to Woolworths. Now I hadn’t realised that the pre-Christmas DS sold out everywhere hysteria hadn’t finished at Christmas and actually they still seem to be pretty hard to get hold of. Woolworths were fine about swapping it over but they don’t have any to swap it with, it was bought on one of Ady’s workmates’ credit cards as she collected it for us when we were worrying about the shortage and paid for it so it couldn’t be refunded onto her card as we don’t have it, they wouldn’t give us cash as we didn’t pay cash for it and so they created a gift card with £100 credit on it for us instead. Which would be fine if any of the six Woolworths stores we subsequently drove to had one in stock. But not only do none of them seem to have any, in any colour (and Scarlett, fairly enough, is insisting on a pink replacement again) and cannot tell us when they might be likely to get any more. 🙁

I’ve managed to track a pink one down at Argos in Brighton which I’ve reserved until Monday night but unless Woolworths are prepared to give us the cash back we can’t go and get it anyway. Hopefully as they are unable to actually offer us a replacement or a timescale for one we can get them to agree to the cash tomorrow so we can go and get it from Argos. Meanwhile Tarly is being very brave and understanding about it but is also pretty sad at her DS-less state :(. More on that saga no doubt tomorrow…

As we were still right over in Bognor long after the children’s tea time we got them McDonalds for tea and then came home for them to watch Primeval before bed. I’d developed a headache over the course of the afternoon and attempted to lay down quietly on the sofa but got clambered all over by very pointy jointed little people so had a long bath instead (which I had constant visitors too :roll:). The headache did abate a bit but is starting to return with a vengence so hopefully it is just tiredness and I’m off to bed to see if I can see it off.