Jess’s key worker, Millie, handed me one of the plastic changing-room tags from M&S when I got to nursery this afternoon. It had a number three on it. Apparently they’d had a ‘what we did at the weekend’ session and Jess had got it out of her backpack to illustrate her story about me ‘taking my clothes off in the shops’.
I questioned Jess about it on the way home. She said she’d wanted to tell everyone about it because she thought it was funny that my bottom was so hairy but that the lady in the other changing room didn’t have any hair at all.
‘She looked just like my Tiny Tears dolly, Mummy,’ she said.
Drove the rest of the way home in silence, wondering how I will ever look Millie in the eye again.
FaceTimed Mum and Dad this evening. Jess started to tell them about the woman in the changing room but I managed to change the subject by suggesting she show them her Sylvanians. Jess ran off to get her beavers and Mum started to ask me about Ian.
‘Have you had any more thoughts about giving things another go?’ she asked.
‘Mum,’ I said, ‘it’s been nine months now, and we’re both much happier with how things are.’
‘Are you, though?’ she asked.
Jess ran back in then and snatched the laptop away so I was spared having to think about it.
Norwegian cruise fantasies – 7. Potential Daddy Saddle-based nightmares – tbc. Jaffa Cakes – 4. (Pre-empting trauma of Daddy Saddle dreams.)
Cassie arrived at Busy Beavers today in a fur coat.
Aside from the whole animal cruelty thing, obviously, can you imagine anything less suitable to wear while carrying around a small child? If I wore a fur coat on a day out with Jess I’m pretty sure it would look like roadkill within about half an hour. When I got into work on Monday, Angela, who does fundraising and sits next to me, had to pick an actual piece of cheese out of my hair.
Sierra and I encouraged Jess and Fox towards the home corner so we could follow Cassie and the coat. We heard her tell Yvonne, who fawns around her like she’s the bloody Queen or something, that her husband bought it for her as a surprise Christmas gift and that she felt awful about it. She didn’t look like she felt awful.
‘We’d promised we were only getting each other token gifts,’ she told Yvonne, ‘because of the Norwegian Fjord cruise, and then he goes and gets me this! I felt terrible as I only got him a Daddy Saddle!’
I was so busy thinking about the casualness of the cruise comment that for a second my brain didn’t process Daddy Saddle. Then I realised Sierra was choking on her rich tea finger. Cassie shot us a look as I escorted Sierra to the opposite side of the room, where she collapsed into mild hysterics.
She wanted to google Daddy Saddle there and then but I pointed out that if it was some kind of sex aid then I didn’t want it showing up on the church hall Wi-Fi and God having another excuse to turn me away. Not that I believe in him, but you need to keep your options open.
Looked up Daddy Saddle when I got home. I think I’d have had more respect for Cassie if it had been a sex aid. Ian and I have both given plenty of horsey rides to the girls when they were small, letting them ride on our backs, but we never felt the need to use an actual saddle. I wonder if Cassie’s husband is also made to wear a bit in his mouth?
Steve announced this morning that as I’ve been working at the museum for a year now, I’m due an appraisal and that he’s putting it in the diary for 9 a.m. next Friday. I asked if perhaps we could make it 9.30, just to give me chance to arrive and get sorted but he said he was going to be very busy with other meetings and it had to be 9. I checked his diary while he was in the toilet and the only other thing in it on Friday was ‘dental hygienist’ at 3. He does it on purpose – jealousy, I think, because of my part-time hours. He likes testing me.
Maggie, my very favourite volunteer, came in to do her Friday afternoon exhibition tours and brought me a piece of home-made lemon drizzle cake. She told me not to mind Steve. She said she’s pretty sure he lives at home with his mother as she saw them in Sainsbury’s last week arguing over crunchy versus smooth peanut butter. She said Steve’s mother won.
Weekend too tedious to write about.