It's 10:20pm. I'm writing this sitting on a stool in the dining room while I roast coffee for the morning. This isn't where I'm supposed to be. I'm supposed to be asleep in a hotel bed in Amsterdam. Except I got bumped from my afternoon flight because it was oversubscribed. Apparently airlines can legally sell more tickets for a flight than the number of seats on the plane—on the assumption that one or two people won't turn up and the airline can occasionally keep the extra fare. Seems like a screwy rule to me. Doesn't benefit the customer. And no way could you do this at the theatre or a sporting event. But apparently it's okay for flights. The mind boggles. And when they oversell a flight? Well it's first come, first served. And it so happened that I was last in line today. Online check-in didn't work for me. And my satnav took me to a carpark 16 miles from the airport, adding 30 mins to my journey time. So I was persona non grata when I got to...
Yesterday was my first day of having both boys by myself all day for a while (Char has changed her working patterns, so I now have them all day on Tuesdays). Started by finding out A got into our first choice school. Sorted his nursery funding for the next term, went to playgroup, had fun playing at home, and got their haircut. A successful day’s parenting. Char, on the other hand, came home from having them today and said she hates looking after them by herself. Not good. Oh, and my new sales page went live today. Happy with it. Now I need to start driving traffic to it.
Ansel’s swimming class was cancelled (second week in a row), so we went to library then joined to public swim an hour later. There was a young family there—parents in their twenties, uneducated, with a baby girl and a boy slightly older than A. The boy obviously didn’t have much experience in the water, and he was clearly scared. But his frustrated parents (particularly his dad), instead of reassuring him and making him feel safe, were making things worse and creating additional pressure by saying “Stop being silly, stop panicking, put your feet on the floor.” They no doubt meant well, but it wasn’t helpful, and the poor kid was so upset. He kept asking to stand on the steps, but his parents weren’t hearing him. It was hard to watch. I felt so sorry for that poor kid because he wasn’t doing anything wrong—he just wasn’t meeting his parents expectations, and they were not being supportive at all . And you...