This morning seems a very long time ago

I worked again this morning. My hours are a bit all over the place as I have theoretically swapped Saturday shifts for a while to cover a vacancy but as I already had various things booked through July and August on my weekends off I seem to be working lots in a row. I am getting paid extra for the odd one or two and it also all goes in my favour as Fabulous Employee of the Decade too ;). So this week I’ve clocked up three mornings getting up for work and the grand total of 15 hours. This actually sounds pretty feeble given I used to work a 10 hour day 5 days a week every single week but that was nearly 10 years ago and I didn’t have children or a shitty cold to deal with :lol:. This week has really taken everything out of me with poorly children, feeling crap myself, a succession of late and disturbed nights sleep, Ady coughing (and therefore me wanting to divorce him and mentally cataloguing all our belongings and dividing them up) and anything else self-pitying and slightly whiny I can think of adding to the list of reasons why you should all feel sorry for me. Ah yes, I have a bone in my leg! 😆

Anyway work was fine, I spent 3 hours on the enquiry desk, part of it trying to explain that Mamma Mia is only just out at the cinema so no, you really can’t put your name down on a list to borrow the dvd when it comes out just yet to a mad old bint of a woman, making a judgement call on £18 worth of fines on a blokes account for books such as Katie Price (aka Jordan)’s first novel, a Jane Green (chick lit) book and something else equally ‘girlie’ which he claimed never to have taken out on his ticket. We’d had the books back anyway, it was just fines for them having been returned (sometime back in May) very late, so I waived them.I had someone who wanted ‘books about the United Nations’ and another person who wanted the London cabbies book of The Knowledge. Ooh it was frantic! I did some more work on my display and then I gratefully came home.

It’s my Mum’s birthday today, she is 61, a fact which fills her with horror and denial. My Granny (her Mum) is the same. She was 80 3 weeks ago, a fact I delighted in telling Davies and Scarlett knowing they would repeat it back to her regularly 😆 She told my Mum she was 21 for so many years when my Mum was a girl that she was a laughing stock in her classroom when she told the rest of the class her mum was 21 when she was already about 13 herself! So I’m surprised she is struggling so much with being her age herself. I have full intentions of telling everyone my age with a ‘you know’ after it at every single opportunity as soon as I am over 50, said with an expectant air so they can tell me how well I look for my age, how I must be kidding and how they simply can’t believe it. Of course after 40 you have to choose face or figure so I will finally be on a winner by being overweight by having no wrinkles or scrawnyness to deal with, I will be plump, jolly and ‘wearing well’ when I am 72 you know.

I had made a chocolate cake last night so when I got home I sandwiched it together with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and smashed up maltesers. I was delicious and looked very M&S posh pudding-y.

We headed over to my parents for late lunch, where Great Granny (she’s 80 you know) was also there and it was all very pleasant and nice. My Mum took the children off to the park at the end of their road for half an hour or so on her own while I slumped and bitched with my Dad and Ady talked at length to my Granny about Cornwall. Dad for the first time ever openly talked about the very clear favouritism that my Mum has for my brother, which is a carbon copy of the favourtism that Granny has for my uncle over my Mum and my Mum is now showing for Davies over Scarlett. I always used to think it was a relating more to the younger child thing as Mum is the oldest out of her and her brother, I was the oldest out of me and Frazer. But it was one of the biggest reasons why I was so adamant I didn’t want a daughter as I was so worried about history repeating yet again and me favouring a son and not getting on so well with a daughter. Mum’s clear favouring Frazer was talked about by other people within the family but Dad has never come right out and said it before but he was saying today how much she goes on and on about Davies all the time and never Scarlett, how she panders to Davies but has no patience with Scarlett and so on and how he worries that it won’t be long before the children start to notice. 🙁 Personally I think she spends so little time with them, and hardly ever on her own with noone else around that it won’t have any serious impact. I know that Scarlett will be fairly ‘well it’s your loss’ in her reaction to it anyway and that Davies will probably be the one who is most uncomfortable with it if it becomes obvious as he is very keen for fairness in their treatment from everyone. Interesting conversation with Dad though…

Ady and Granny came and joined Dad and I and we all talked about the war and evacuation as Granny was evacuated to Cornwall during the war. I’m very aware that the whole generation of evacuees are all getting rarer and rarer and would love to document some of her experiences as although Davies and Scarlett aren’t really old enough to listen to them just yet I imagine stories like that from a family member will be very precious one day.

Mum and the children returned so we did the cake, lit the candles and my Dad did tricks with the matches like putting them inside his mouth to make his cheeks glow and burning them all the way down. Stuff like that amazes D and S like they have some sort of clown for a Grandad instead of the old man (he’ll be 70 next month you know ;)) who falls asleep on the sofa one afternoon a week when he’s supposed to be looking after them! 😆

Frazer arrived home soon after so we clevely concealed the half of the cake we’d eaten, put the candles back in again and sang again with Frazer in the photos and video footage 😆 The original plan had been for me and Mum to go out shopping for her present this afternoon but they were off out tonight with friends, I was flagging fast and time was getting on so we came home and have planned to go out tomorrow instead.

We got home with time for Ady to continue his online tent research – the little tents have gone back after he found horror stories of no waterproofness at all to them even in light showers. Treehouse – as raved about and twittered often by LovelyEm – arrived in the post so Davies and Scarlett and I had a game of that and then they spent about 3/4 of an hour playing a game with the pieces which involved them being Mummies, Daddies and Babies in a very complicated plotline. Honestly I have no idea why my children have so many toys, they can occupy themselves with a bit of knotted string and a handful of leaves :lol:. Then it was time for Doctor Who. I thought it was brilliant, Davies and I watched it cuddled together, Scarlett dipped in and out and was delighted to see K9. I won’t spoil it for anyone who’s not watched it already but my best bit was Captain Jack’s line towards the end 😆

I booked Wickstead on Thursday and the bumph has come through so we’ve been looking at the details of the park and the rides and looking forward to that very much :).