Mondays...

Mondays are a whirl of activity for our family.  The nocturnal child goes into college, which means catching the 06:59 bus.  She has to catch that bus as they only run every two hours and the next one gets her into college an hour late.  Saying that though, we're not complaining as buses are a bit of a luxury novelty for us.  Until November the only bus that came to our village arrived at 14:23 - so one of us had to get up early every morning to do the run into town to drop her at the bus station.  It doesn't follow that we get to sleep in now though... her daily ritual of shower, hairwash, blowdry, straightening, curling, hairspray, straightening, make-up, curling again, more hairspray means that we are usually awakened by 06:00 at the latest.  

On Mondays, DH works from home, so a level of quiet must be maintained as he spends most of his time on the phone, troubleshooting, arranging appointments and so on.  It's quite entertaining listening to some of his business conversations, hearing his commanding professionalism coming across when I know for a fact he's wearing pjs and 'monster-feet' slippers.

My Mondays are slightly more complicated, starting with the school run, then on to Slimming World for my weekly weigh-in, Tesco/Waitrose for the weekly food shop, home, 30 minutes on the Wii Fit/Your Shape, quick shower, early lunch, then into school.  I run the Key Stage 2 hen club at school - the Coop Troop.  Once signed in, I spend 10 minutes searching for the outside keys and another 20 minutes hunting for the equipment I need, which the caretaker will have moved/hidden/thrown away.  This week he had piled dozens of paint cans directly in front of the bucket/bags I use, thrown away the shreded paper I use for bedding and completely filled the sink in the garden shed with boxes and tins and put a pile of ladders between the path and the compost bin.  Every week presents a different challenge.  Once I am ready, I have to round up an unknown band of children and take them out to the hen enclosure where we don surgical gloves and pick up poo.  We scrub the Eglu, top up food and water and talk about poo.  If we're really lucky and the children behave and the hens are bold enough to eat from their hands, we can catch one so that each child gets to hold a hen.  Oh the excitement!  After that, I go into YD's class and help.  If I'm lucky, I get to work with small groups on literacy or art projects.  If, as this week, I am unlucky, I spend two tortuous hours in a cupboard somewhere sorting out and labelling things that will never see the light of day again, unless Ofsted pay an impromptu visit.  At 15:00 I go into reception and set up textiles club, which I run with a very good friend who happens to teach there.  I get home for around 16:30, rustle up a meal and then, this week, had go out to teach for 18:00.  After three mind-numbing hours, I crawled home again to have a soak in the bath and fall into bed (where I sit now with the laptop on my knees).

Anyway, what I actually logged on to say was that the male child DID get up and go to the job centre this morning and I have a clean and tidy kitchen courtesy of the nocturnal child.

I am still in shock.