Last week was really unpleasant. MF was on holiday, PTF had to leave the establishment precipitously and people seem to have started Xmas shopping on Amazon. Added to the special on BeadMerrily of free postage if you spend £35, it was a hectic week and there was only me to do it. I had a HORRIBLE week and got completely overwhelmed and thoroughly upset. I need more space in my head than i have at the moment, there is just too much going on in it.
However, i did get through, managed to lay my hands on another (really lovely, going to be perfect) part timer who started this week and am now catching up. I’ve decided i need at least one more person part time though for the next 4 months, so i need to organise that. Fortunately the big three girls were at their musical theatre workshop all week and Josie had several nice days with one or other of us and only one boring day at work with me; even then she got spoiled rotten by various people. So it could have been worse.
Got to see the girls do Oliver! on Friday which was this time performed in the drama dept of a school that would probably be our first choice (out of not a lot of choice) for Fran should she choose to go to senior school. She is thinking about it and is working on her handwriting so that if she does go she feels like she can manage. She’s still umming and aaahing about year 6 (honestly….) but she has a week, they don’t start till Monday. (Grumble) I think seeing inside the senior school interested her, but it is a brand new, as yet unused, building which i think always seems quite appealing!
Lovely time at the Beans on Saturday and then on Sunday Fran demanded we attended the CLAPA Summer Garden Party. A slightly surreal experience; about a million cleft babies who i found it very hard to associate myself with. All that just seems like a million years ago now, hard to imagine why it ever felt like a big deal. Which only goes to help understand why not everyone DOES understand why it felt like a big deal; even i felt like saying “it’s not heart surgery, is it?” And yet, at the other end of the scale to that, i chatted to just one person with a little one, very little one, who had had a horrible time and i could see how completely traumatised she still was by the whole surgery/feeding/c-section thing. And i DO remember that.
Fran loved it and was full of herself; good for her i think, to see teens with clefts and be among people “like her” – only the same as being with other HE’d kids i suppose. Josie was terrified of the hired Stormtroopers and Amelie thought they were police coming to get kids without clefts. Maddy had assumed you had to pretend to have a cleft 🙄
We saw her surgeon, who still shows all new cleft parents the angel photo of her and is still clearly very fond of her. Mind you, as a piece of walking talking handiwork, who wouldn’t be?!?!?! It was a pleasant afternoon, i was glad we took her, even if it isn’t my cup of tea really. For some reason, i never felt comfortable with getting “support” over it – it always felt like a very personal thing while we were in the thick of it.
Monday was mainly me at work and the kids playing/doing bits of work at Sue’s. In the evening they went to gym. They told Fran they wanted to assess her for the squad training sessions which surprised me as i assumed she was just too old but i suppose she is small and fit and fairly supple so might be in with a chance. Not totally sure whether i want her to though, the gymnasts i knew at school were always under huge pressure over their weight and it is a big commitment. On the other hand, the coach says they have their eye on all three, certainly Amelie, so in for a penny…. we’ll see anyway, may come to nothing.
Off out now; have just had an email back from a very old school friend (though not quite as old as the one last week) and very excited about that!
