A whole day at work for me today. And I had a really good day too :).
Lots of laughs, lots of banter with colleagues and borrowers, I spent ages with a dyslexic man who wanted the whole series of Indian in the cupboard on audio book as he remembered his mum reading them to him and his sister and wanted to hear them read to him again (I assume his mother is no longer alive 🙁 ). We had the first but none of the subsequent 4 titles on audio book so I filled out some request forms for him, which was how I learnt he was dyslexic as he asked if I would do them for him. We had a really nice chat about books from childhood, he was really grateful for my help and another colleague complimented me on how well I’d dealt with him :).
Later in the day one of the reading group attendees came in and was after book recommendations. I didn’t really know her taste but she’d liked the last couple of books I’d recommended for reading group so I decided to go with some of the books I’d read recently and liked so she went away with some Celia Ahern, Jodi Piccoult, Lionel Shriver and one other that now escapes me. Hopefully she’ll like one or more of them. I was with her for ages and being observed by the head librarian. It is one of the aspects of my job I really enjoy building up some sort of rapport with regular borrowers and sharing books we’ve enjoyed with others :). She also told me her daughter is at Rainbows with Scarlett although I’d never noticed her at pick up time and she has a same age as Davies son too.
I stayed behind chatting to the head librarian about reading groups generally and ours specifically trying to come up with ideas for books to get debates going more rather than books we all quite liked and don’t have much more to say about. I think we’ve come up with some titles which should certainly spark conversations with the fairly diverse group of people that come along to reading group :).
At home, unfortunately there was the inevitable price to pay for having had a good day :(. Ady had been home with the kids all day and had initially said he’d be ‘off’ with them having worked from 7am til 10pm yesterday but he ended up with a massive amount of work from home to do and spent most of the day on his laptop. I rang at lunchtime and he was all moany about work and when I got in Davies asked me to go upstairs with him so he could have a moan about his day and Scarlett had run out to the garden to meet me so delighted was she that I was home. It’s hard for Ady as he has this sort of novelty dad status which means the kids expect rather more from him when he’s home than they perhaps would from me. Also I think I manage to be more upfront and honest about what they can expect from me whereas Ady sometimes overplays what a great time they are going to have together and then fails to deliver.
When Ady was still working at nearly 730pm I had a tantrum about it so it’s been a bit fraught here this evening. Scarlett is sleeping in Davies’ room for a ‘sleepover’ so they watched Chittty Chitty Bang Bang while Ady cooked dinner and Davies has just come down in tears over some imagined triviality so I cuddled him and he fell asleep in my arms which was slightly odd – funny how you can look at their sleeping faces and see both the baby they once were and the teenager they are slowly growing into all there at once. I had to wake him to walk upstairs though as there was no way I’d have managed to carry him up there and negotiate my way over Scarlett on a mattress on the floor to get him to bed.
Still tomorrow is Friday and we’re off to soft play hopefully seeing quite a few friends. It’s no museum of course but I think it will be a good day.