Tuesday
I love creche day. Fred goes off in the morning (sometimes I take her in on the tram, sometimes she goes on Martin's bike. This morning I think Martin has caved to illness, fatigue and the snap freeze and taken her in the car) and the house settles into quiet. Una is still happy to lie around alone on the floor and kick and have unfettered access to Fred's toys (life with Fred is somewhat dizzying for Una). Some Tuesdays Martin has a placement in a school and Una and I are alone for the day. I work. She sleeps. We go for little walks to the supermarket or we visit. It's funny though because Undine doesn't like Tuedays:

Undine straggled down the stairs to the bathroom. She felt a lump of something, starting at the base of her spine and working its way upwards. It wasn't a physical something, though it belonged inside her body, under her skin, trapped inside the fine network of muscle, tissue, nerve and bone. She knew what was happening because it had happened before, and even though she felt a little shiver of fear, mostly she was annoyed, because it was Tuesday and Tuesdays were - on the whole - not to be trusted.

After I wrote that line about Tuesdays I found a long essay online about Bad Tuesdays in Jane Austen novels. Apparently Tuesdays really aren't to be trusted. I don't know about Austen but I picked the day fairly randomly, though here's Undine's case against them:

Tuesdays were just badly designed, she thought crossly, as Lou danced in front of her with a piece of burnt toast and a coffee. They didn't have the anticipation and freshness of Mondays,when you woke up with the weekend still singing in your mind, and made resolutions to be more organised for the rest of the week, and looked fofrward to school so you could hear who wore what to Nick's party and the various assorted minutiae that coloured other people's lives. By Tuesday the weekend was well and truly down with - old news - and the next weekend felt a long way away.

But here we are all big fans of Tuesdays. Hooray for Tuesdays!

My favourite part about Tuedays? It's when Fred comes home, if she's on the bike she starts shouting halfway down the laneway 'Mama, we're ba-ack, Mama, we're ba-ack.' She runs in and kisses me, if she's tired she hugs too, collapsing into me. The first thing she always says is, 'Where's Una?' (this is what she always says to me if we talk on the phone when she's out too). Then she tells me about her day and I tell her about mine. It's great being three, having news of your own. She seems to have a lot of friends, but there is one special one - Mali. Mali is 4 and an all important half, she speaks German and has a sister called Lily. Fred loves her the best and Mali loves 'Freddie' (creche is the one place she is called Freddie, to distinguish her from a little boy, Frederick, who has the nickname Fred).

So it's almost 9am and I have a whole Tuesday stretching out in front of me. Time for coffee, and then to work.