A work all day day for me.
Dad was here in the morning so having made him a coffee and had a quick chat I headed off to work. James commented last weekend at how much I look like my Dad and it is something I see ever more in photos of myself these days. I also recognise many of my Dad’s traits in me (although my mother has always muttered darkly about me being ‘just like your father…’ so it must have forever been the case ;)). Yesterday as I called goodbye and shut the door behind me I could hear Davies and Dad chuckling about something and making each other laugh. Davies very much shares my sense of humour which often takes flights of fantasy in the surreal and ridiculous and I definitely get that from my Dad. Dad and I could spend hours happily engaged in making up nonsense together and Davies is heading the same way. I made me all smiley as I drove to work thinking about my father and my son sharing a laugh together and my boy taking after my Dad in some ways given my Dad is my first and will always be my biggest hero :).
But it did have me wondering quite why it pleases me to see both physical resemblance and character similarities between myself and a man in his 70s. I am now about the same age as Dad was when I was born, so still younger than my first ever memories of my Dad. I clearly recall him being 44 and dancing about in my bedroom singing ‘I’ve got the key of the door, never been 44 before!’. There is a very silly, juvenille quality to my Dad which my Mum not only doesn’t share but she doesn’t appreciate or get either. I do, and I often find myself being really very silly and revelling in it. Dad is still like that in his 70s, I hope he’s still like it in his 90s and I hope I go to my grave (in many, many years time) remaining equally childish and finding joy in small and silly things.
After I left Davies, Scarlett and Dad talked about money, with Scarlett proclaiming that you can have too much money and Dad telling her not to be so bloody stupid, of course you can’t! :lol:They had a good morning apparently with lots of interesting discussions. My Dad will never quite get his head around Home Education and still regularly tells me the kids would be far better off at school but has now come out of the closet so to speak about having HE grandchildren and is clearly revelling in who they are and the questions they ask and conversations they have with him. I’m really glad Mum has her full time job, not just because I am pleased for her but because it means it is Dad who looks after D&S once a week these days and I think all of them get so very much out of it :).
Ady came home just after lunch and was here for the afternoon. They did chicken clearing out and playroom tidying.
Meanwhile back in the world of libraries I did the banking and Baby Rhymetime preparation. If likely rota changes come about I may be doing Storytime more frequently which I am happy to do if I can drop a Rhymetime and do one storytime and one Rhymetime a month so I was training up one of the Sarahs to do Rhymetime. We went through some of the rhymes and the tunes and actions and came up with a list for the day. A slightly surreal (Davies and my Dad would have loved it) moment came when 3 other colleagues came in the office and there were five of us all demonstrating the finger movements we use for Incy Wincy Spider 😆
Tea break and then Sarah and I were on. We had 10 children and 9 adults attending and thanks to Sarah’s dodgy knees we did some standing up songs. My style is rather more slothful and I tend to sit on the floor with the kids and parents and stay there, Sarah can’t sit on her legs for 20 minutes so we got up for The Grand Old Duke of York. While we were all up it felt right to march properly so we all marched in a circle. We got up again later for ‘heads, shoulder, knees and toes’ and I did threaten to do ‘the hokey cokey’ but didn’t carry it out. It was rather more of an aerobic workout than either I or the mothers are used to though 😆
The rest of the day was pretty slow; I rang Cara for a chat about Chatterbooks feedback questionnaires which were worked on and delivered to me later in the day ready for Monday. I also thanked her for a braille book that she had sent me for Davies and Scarlett to get a closer look and feel of after the Badgers session as she thought they might be interested. They were and we have all been marvelling at what a feat reading by fingertip must be, particularly if you don’t even know what words look like anyway.
Finally it was home time – a tea time chat with Sarah who ‘celebrates’ her 25th wedding anniversary next week was rather sobering. Ady and I are 17 years together in a few months and I can honestly say hand on heart I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else, it makes me sad to imagine there are so many couples who feel trapped or constricted or indeed anything other than a feeling of jubilation at such anniversaries really.
Am I a smug bastard? 😆
Back home again – having responded to a text asking to pick up fish and chips for one child and a tin of tomato soup for the other. Children fed I read a chapter of Happy Prince before they headed off to bed. We had pizza for dinner but I had peaked rather too early with alcoholic beverages so we ended the dvd we were watching (Run, Fat Boy, Run inspired by the Eddie Izzard documentary we’d watched the night before) and went to bed Very Early Indeed.