I really must start going to bed earlier. Although it isn’t actually half the day I miss out on, and Small didn’t get up any earlier than me this morning, so maybe I should just accept that mornings don’t really happen and evenings do. Hm.
Anyway, was in the shower when friend and friend of friend arrived this morning – friend S was due to feed the cat this week but has been sent to Scotland by work so friend of friend S, K, is stepping in instead. A little odd, I suppose, but it’ll work.
That took us nearly up to lunchtime, so we ate party food leftovers for lunch, and discussed 5-a-day fruit and veg requirements. We noticed last night that the children ate really well from the array of food in front of them, and it was pretty good stuff as well. Home made potato salad, boiled eggs, cumberland party sausages, home made bread, carrot sticks and self assembly fruit salad as well as chocolate cake for pudding. All good stuff pretty much – there were some crisps as well but given there were 9 ppl, don’t think anyone binged on them! So today we talked about fruit and veg and carbohydrates, and discovered that actually the children like quite a variety of vegetables, it’s just a case of making sure they get offered them. Our standard evening fare is convenience stuff, a habit we’ve got into from working days and short evenings, so really we just need to drift out of that and any dietary shortages should sort themselves out.
After lunch, I tried to do things. I tried to write a letter on my new version of Word, and couldn’t work out how you get it to know you are writing a letter, so did it manually instead of using wizards or templates and got annoyed. I’m sure it is wonderfully more featured and powerful than the last version, but does it have to be quite so opaque? Anyway, letter written and form filled in to dispute council tax summons, so with that in an envelope we pottered off to find a postbox and then the library.
Small had ordered us some listening for the car, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Unabridged 8 Audio CD Set)
which we picked up today. It looks as though it has been extremely well loved, the librarian looked at it doubtfully and said she hoped they would all play! Then they browsed for a while, Big picked herself up a couple more Jacqueline Wilson books, Twin Trouble (Mammoth storybook)
and something else – both really easy ones as she already has a few library books at home. Small grabbed a Postman Pat book, I’ve no idea why, and I got Vanishing Acts
and Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway: How to Turn Your Fear and Indecision into Confidence and Action
. I’ll come back to that in a minute.
At the desk, the two children ahead of us were excitedly choosing toys from a box, and Small watched this with much interest. The very nice tall librarian (to differentiate her from the very nice slightly smaller librarian and the not quite so nice rather brisk very small librarian who always wears a tabard for some reason) looked at us and said she had no idea why she hadn’t given the children Ravenous Reader cards in October, but she would sign us up now, and we could easily catch up as we read lots of books. I hope they will let us do it restrospectively, as I’m not sure whether we’ll be here in March, and I can just see how happy Small will be if he lugs this card around for a month or two and doesn’t get a present! Three months of two books a month and then they get a plastic toy of some description – do it three times over and they get to go into a prize draw in June. I can safely say we won’t be here by then!
Hm. Big was rather unhappy as we walked away that we’d bothered signing up for something we can’t finish. So I got home and looked up Suffolk libraries to see if they have anything similar, couldn’t find anything along quite those lines, but did find stuff about the Sunday experience. Sounds like fun.
Now the children are about to go and get bathed, and I can talk about fear.
I am almost always afraid, and I find that it paralyses me, I avoid taking anything other than the most banal decision. I don’t make phonecalls, if I can’t sort something out by email it tends not to get sorted, which is why I haven’t done anything about all sorts of bank accounts and online assessment and even the tesco clubcard vouchers.
Which is utterly pathetic and a completely terrible example to be giving my children. I don’t know when it started, I think it’s grown up gradually over the last few years, it may well have got much worse since I’ve had children actually, as decisions seem to have so much more weight behind them. I don’t remember being this afraid when I lived on my own and only had responsibility for my cats, although it may well be that moving to Sheffield and losing two of them and the attendant guilt was a contributory factor in starting to feel afraid.
It’s getting things wrong that I’m most afraid of. I’m not quite sure what that means, it’s a very nebulous sort of phrase. But because I’m afraid, I don’t do anything and that is worse I think.
So it seemed like a sensible book to pick up. I’m sick of living like this, waiting for whatever it is that’s going to go wrong next and constantly worrying. Time to move on.
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