Thursday never looking back

Work for me this morning. Lazy, didn’t go to sleep til ridiculous o’clock children just barely scrambled out of bed before I left 😆 I started 15 minutes earlier than normal but finished at 130pm rather than 5pm as they owed me my prorata equivalent of one day off for Bank Holiday morning – I think my average day is 3 and 3/4 hours or something. This meant for the 4th week in a row we didn’t need Mum to come over and of course next week we’re away. I suspect this means when she does have them again (on her own, she was of course here last night with Dad while we didn’t see Hugh) it will be all the harder, but it’s been quite nice for the kids to have the break I think.

So Ady was home with them – no real idea what they got up to but everyone seemed happy when I came home. I’d had an okay morning at work, slightly marred by working with Nightmare Colleague who just seems to slow the whole pace of the library down to her own snails pace. There was also minor excitement when a strip of lighting stopped working but noone but me seemed to notice. I turned that strip off at the switch and then there was a dreadful burning electical type smell throughout the library and we realised I was the most senior person there and supposed to be about to go home. I was very reluctant to leave, thought about finding the fuse box as I was fairly sure something had blown and the switch had tripped but I know a) how anal workplaces are now about you touching anything remotely dangerous and b) if I’m going to die young and tragically I don’t want it to be electric shock in the library – that’s so much more Cludeo than Rock n roll! Eventually another colleague came in and urged me to go and I felt better about it then.

Once home Davies went off to play DS in his room for a bit and Scarlett and I ate toast and chatted. I started to work out various upcomming things in my diary and realised I was running out of diary. I also needed to get some bits for dinner so decided to head back into Lancing to pick up a new diary and food. Davies was engrossed in his game so I said he didn’t have to come if he didnt’ want to and he said he’d rather stay home. We were only planning to be half an hour and I told him to not open the door to anyone and ring me if he needed me.

Scarlett and I did the diary and food shopping and popped into the library where I’d parked to check it hadn’t blown up. All seemed fine 🙂

Davies rang just as I was pulling up outside to check how much longer we’d be. It felt both strange and completely fine to leave him here. Camp has definitely had subtle effects on him in terms of his maturity and keen-ness to try new things, be bold and take chances. I am noticing a slight distancing from me but it feels fine, in very much a ‘you have given me the strength to do this, now watch me and be proud’ type way – and of course he still comes back very regularly for cuddles. Nearly 2 weeks home I am able to put aside how crap I felt about his absense and revel in the positives for us all of the experience. 😉

I spent some time online when Scarlett and I got home. I did some notbacktoschool picnic emailing, some Longleat finalising, some checking of RI dates and emailed the RI to see if I can go on a reserve list for the event that clashes with the Mass parliament lobby as I’m torn between the two and if we could go to the morning RI we could do both. I also spent some time going through a book from work about 1000 ideas to do in the school holidays and writing down loads of links of cool looking things to look up more.

While I was doing all that Davies did a huge floorplan of both the upstairs and the downstairs of the house, wandering round from room to room to get it right and add in furniture etc. With very minimal help (as in just checking it was spelt how he thought it was) he labelled all the rooms and stuck it up on the lounge door. He and Tarly then made markers each for them and the cat and Davies rang Ady to ask him to bring some bluetac home. It is now a ‘where in the house is everyone?’ board and Ady and I have made our own markers too so we all have to move ourselves around the house depending on where we’re going. No idea where he came up with the thought but it’s great piece of artwork and all pretty much to scale. I should dig out the proper floorplans of the house really from when we had the loft converted so he can see all of them with the various outside pictures and notations too, I think he’d like them.

I made the kids tea while they tidied up and watched a random programme about Cain and Abel which led them to ask what religion they are. I explained that in terms of the programme which was referencing Judaism and Christianity and Islam they were Christians but in practise we don’t have a religion and we talked about heritage a bit. Then they turned over to CBBC and watched something with a knitted bear instead…

Ady was really late home having been here til nearly 2pm with the children so they wandered off to play after their tea while I carried on with online stuff, mostly reading my own old posts on Monster and Teeny in a vain effort to pull together something interesting without repeating myself for Jax’s blog carnival thingy. Eventually Ady did arrive home and we read several chapters of Kensuke’s Kingdom. Really enjoying that and they did beg 2 more chapters than I’d planned. I’d almost have kept going but it was getting dark and my bath was calling me.

Tomorrow we’re off to E’s in the morning for a couple of hours. I’ve been looking at last few bits for Davies’ birthday (he wants surprisingly little so I want to boost it a bit but am also quite happy to be moving into more considered gifts rather than a sea of plastic tat!) and debating ordering online or sending Ady off with a shopping list ;).