Training and cataloguing

I was at Worthing library this morning for a training session on the new computer systems that are being installed in the libraries over the next few months. Ady was home with Davies and Scarlett so rather than drive and pay for parking he ran me in. We also picked up S, my colleague who was coming too. She thoroughly enjoyed Davies’ observations of some boats out at sea which he decided where on fire and described as ‘boiling black with red hot embers’ 😆

The training was pretty good although S and I were getting our heads round the system rather quicker than the other 3 attendees. Fortunately it was two trainers to five trainees so Wendy, our direct senior was able to concentrate on S and I and keep us learning. We had to join new borrowers and make up name, address and occupation for then so S and I enjoyed setting up accounts for each other including Mc prefixing our surnames as per a day at work a few weeks ago when we all added a Mc to our names for the day and I was a sailor while she was a shepherd 😆 Later we had to add another family members so I had a twin who was afro-carribean while I was of course scottish and she had a five year old son who was a professor called Dave 😆 Little things…

The training finished just after midday so we dropped S home and then Ady went off to work, Davies, Scarlett and I went to Brooklands to meet up with Lucy and Co and a couple of other local home ed families. Davies and Scarlett were hoping to see Toby there but Tasha and I hadn’t managed to coordinate days properly (ie I emailed her late last night and she read it and thought it meant tomorrow) so they didn’t make it. Unfortunately the dynamic didn’t pan out at all well with the couple of children who were already there and Davies was instantly made to feel unwelcome 🙁 Scarlett managed to fall over and graze both knees and an ankle within five minutes of arriving and then managed to fall off the swing and bump her head so I had tears from her twice within 10 minutes too, which is ususual 🙁 Davies wanted to leave pretty much the whole time although he did go off a couple of times to try and play and both children managed to overhear a rather nasty conversation between the other children which upset Davies although Scarlett shrugged it off.

Davies quite daringly climbed over the top of the monkey bars which I looked round to see just as he was finishing and was a bit of a heart in mouth moment. Scarlett did it and managed it with me underneath but she was really scared as heights is one of the few things that she can be cautious about.

We left as it clearly wasn’t going to improve and both children were keen to go so we got an ice cream each and headed for home. On the way home we had a chat about it all and ironed out what was and wasn’t important and my expectation of them to either make the effort to get on with others or ignore them and play together and enjoy themselves regardless of anyone else. It had been enough to put me in a bad mood though so I wasn’t receptive to their efforts to have my attention and eventually they connected on their DSs and enjoyed playing together while I worked through the second assessment of my Healthy Eating online course. I’ll wait for feedback on that and then I just have the third section to work through to complete it although I anticipate a bit more work on the one I submitted today.

Davies and Scarlett had tea and then we headed off to Badgers. On the way we listened to The Carpenters and Scarlett asked me to skip past Rainy Days and Mondays as it made her feel sad and teary. She is often moved by music like that and we talked about how amazing it is that a piece of music can have such a profound effect on your mood. We also talked about Karen Carpenter as they wanted to know if she’d ever recorded anything happy. On the way home we listened to Top of the World to show she had!

I walked down to the beach for half an hour and chatted to my mum on the phone as I need her to look after D and S all day on Friday so Ady can work all day as he was off this morning. That was hard work and I had to grovel for it which makes me feel crappy. I’ve felt really pissed off the last couple of days by the ability of other people to effect my mood as it is not something I normally suffer from and it’s particularly hard when related to other people impacting on Davies and Scarlett’s happiness 🙁 I remember saying to someone when I was pregnant with Davies that the sorts of things I fretted about with regard to parenthood were how to mend broken hearts and fix things a kiss wouldn’t make better. I struggle with my own recollections of being the child people didn’t want to play with, knowing that now I couldn’t care less what other people think of me and I’d consider it their loss to not want to be in my company and knowing that neither of those are particularly helpful to my children in the here and now of their lives. Davies takes things to heart while Scarlett tends not to care so I see me in both of them at different times and I suspect neither is correct. Scarlett will need people and Davies will need to toughen up. It’s even harder when I see them so popular and happy in other company.

Badgers was good, they had a visit from some Community Support Officers who arrived in a CCTV Police van which they all got to go and sit in and explore. I think they mostly covered things like road safety and the role of the police in keeping us safe but they all seemed to enjoy it and came out with various goodies including colouring in sheets, pencils, stickers and a sheet of their own fingerprints.

Home for a very comprehensive ‘what did we learn today’ which included looking up the meanings of the words poignant and melancholy, a brief biography of Karen Carpenter including images and a quick talk about anorexia.

Davies learnt about fingerprints being different on every single person and different on each finger (he knew about everyone having their own unique prints but thought they were the same on each finger) and the six different types of crossings. Scarlett learnt that some police vans have cameras in them and about anorexia, Ady’s learnt that his new phone does all sorts of twiddly things including geocaching (although I think it’s Davies who is most excited about that!) and I have learnt about the nutritional value of coconuts and pineapples as part of my assessment was a food diary from yesterday. I was also unsure as to whether coconut was a nut or a fruit and now I know it is a fruit :).

We had a chapter of George and then it was time for bed for the children as I wanted to watch The Apprentice final five show and The Apprentice. We managed our earliest dinner of the week shortly before 10pm.