One word? When seven would do…

Work day for me all day. I was up early with Ady and the kids and left with an hour to myself after they had left before I had to go to work so blogged on Monster&Teeny about motivation, spurred on by some conversations with friends who visited my Book Sale and some work colleagues over the last few weeks, along with a conversation with Davies and Scarlett about pocket money. Interesting stuff, but tricky to write rather than talk about as I don’t want to cause offence or make others think I am judging their choices so feel the need to keep qualifying what I’m saying which sometimes then comes across as patronising. I should do more daytime, undistracted, sober writing though, it’s enjoyable :).

Off to work where it was banking first and catching up with S, who’s daughter is very ill with a worrying pain & vomiting something which has had her in and out of hospital for the last 10 days. She is in a bad way generally – 18, looking for a job but not knowing what she wants to do, just written off her first car after 2 accidents within a couple of months of passing her driving test and is likely to lose her licence as a result, has had a couple of bouts of glandular fever and just generally sounds very sad and low. I feel so sorry for her and for S who just doesn’t know what to do to help her daughter and is now desperately worried about what this latest illness might be. There has been speculation about an ulcer apparently and having brought her home on Wednesday S left work early in the end yesterday as the GP had been out and her daughter was being readmitted to hospital again yesterday afternoon.

I wasn’t doing Rhyme Time as I’d suggested to Y that maybe it was time to get some more people trained up with me leaving in February and therefore only around for another 8 or so sessions. The Childrens Librarian was in anyway so she took one of the new staff in with her and they did it. It was quite nice sitting at the desk and listening rather than being the one in there leading it.

It was grey and drizzly at lunchtime so I stayed in the staffroom and enjoyed a whole hour with a cup of tea and a magazine all to myself :).

The afternoon dragged rather, I spent some time removing staples from a wall display area, some more time creating cut out letters for a display and then handed it all over to the girl to put up. I even ceremoniously handed over the staple gun and staple remover which has previously always been refered to as ‘Nicola’s staple gun’ 😆 I’m quite enjoying shedding jobs at work :).

I had a long chat with R, one of the librarians who was the supervisor in the afternoon about the restructuring at the library which has all the senior people applying and reapplying for jobs within the new structure. Some are worried, some are positive and some are a bit que sera sera about it. R’s wife also works for the council in a different department and her role is also under threat so it’s very stressful in their house currently. We talked about the ‘one life, live it’ reasoning behind our adventure next year and he told me about his brother who was an architect for a big London firm, working long hours and hating it so retrained and is now an Eco-architect working on green builds, living in a commune type community self sufficient farm project with a load of anarchists and couldn’t be more happy. It’s interesting how so many people know someone who has gone off and done something crazy and how many of them observe how much happier they now are. Hopefully we’ll join those ranks rather than being the cautionary tale instead :).

I got ambushed by an older bloke who wanted to come and talk at me (rather than to me) about how he’d sued councils and police forces and all sorts of people, how his ex wife was a witch, how women had got it all wrong with their feminism and were no longer attractive to men like him and a load of other such ‘opinions’ for about half an hour. He left after thanking me for our chat and saying how much he’d enjoyed it. I agreed it had been a pleasure but it was more from catching the eyes of people standing behind him and thinking how lucky I am to be able to be happy about being me rather than wanting to bring everyone else around me down than because it had actually been pleasurable talking to him. I then talked to an older woman who comes in very regularly and lived near where my Dad grew up and is trying to find information about who might still be around in that area that she knew in childhood. I’ve been helping her every time I’ve been in recently and she’s a nice woman who seems lonely and is happy to have found someone to smile and exchange a hello with. It’s people like both of them who make you realise libraries are more than just free loans of books and they are the ones who never make it onto the statistics of visitors and library users really.

Back at home the kids were just finishing their tea and were very pleased to see me. They both had gripes about Ady who had clearly had a fairly stressful work day with them along with him. Next year is going to be so good for the three of them… I wanted to go out and get the food for tonight as we’ve got the Not Swingers coming for dinner and I thought having all the food already here would be a good move and save me an hour of stress today. Both the kids wanted to come with me so armed with my list we went off while Ady had a bath and an hour to himself. We got everything (dinner parties are definitely cheaper without meat ;)) and then after a bit of a hiatus about stories we ended up in Scarlett’s bedroom cuddled up while I read to them before they went off to bed.

Ady and I had dinner and watched the Attenborough programme. I drank too much and fell asleep on the sofa watching An Idiot Abroad before finally staggering up to bed in the early hours and then being unable to get back to sleep. I’m not making any silly pledges today about alcohol but I do think being away next year will be a good thing for my liver…