The Nursery

That last post (which might be the next post, if you read down the screen in the conventional manner) reminds me that at the nursery, there is a special folder into which one can place pieces of paper that you have written the cute things that children said at the nursery.
"And why might you hear what the children say" you all ask, as one. (All four of you - I check the access logs and know how many people read this.) Well, the nursery is a parent's cooperative, which means it is owned and run by the parents. (I wonder if the parents could decide to sell the nursery and keep the money - in the current housing price climate we could then afford a full time nanny, at least until they went to school.) But what this also means is that the parents work at the nursery (along with some people who actually know what they are doing.)
We were on standby last week, but were called in. The powers that be (i.e. S) decided that I should go and do the first shift, so along I dutifully went. There are 4 parent helpers each day, and each wears an apron, with a label on it that tells you what you are supposed to do. I asked the boys what I should do, from the choices of Art, Dressing Up, or Bikes. Obviously there's only one choice that any red blooded male can make there, and luckily the boys did choose bikes for me.
After I had donned my apron, I discovered that there were two bikes aprons - one is Bikes and Gates, and the second is Bikes and Toilets. By a stroke of luck, I'd chosen Bikes and Gates.
The apron has a laminated sheet on it describing, almost minute by minute, what one should do. I had to rake the sand, looking for cat poop (as they say), litter and PEANUT SHELLS. (There's a big thing about peanuts - I'll come back to that.) Then I had to hose down the sand (this stops it getting too dusty), fetch the tissues and first aid kits (the first aid kits say 'Contains Epi Pens' on them - where I come from Epi is epidemiology, but I didn't really know what an epidemiology pen might be, then I realised it's an Epinephrine pen - which, as regular viewers of ER will know is American for adrenaline (which I can accept, but I have always had a problem with noradrenaline being norepinephrine).
I just looked up EpiPen on Wikipedia, and it's got an entry.
Anyway, I had to hang around while the children did stuff, then get the bikes ready, and supervise the riding of bikes. Sit with them while they had their snack, and then supervise the block room. Or that's what it said on the card. And all that sounds relatively straightforward, but it almost killed me. Partly it almost killed me because there were a lot of children involved, and partly it almost killed me because A (especially A) wanted Daddy to be at his beck and call, like normal, and didn't understand that Daddy wasn't allowed to leave the block room / leave the bikes / get a different sort of paintbrush / play dinosaurs outside ....
When we left I had to hose some more things down, replace the tissues and first aid kits, take the signs off the toilet doors (it wasn't my job to put them on though - seems strange that) go home and lie down. For the rest of the day.
I forgot to sign out the boys, which is apparently a heinous sin, and didn't bring their lunch bags home. S tried to make me go back to redeem these failings, but I couldn't bear to go near the place. It's lucky my route to work doesn't involve cycling past it, or I'd have to take a longer route. Just thinking about it still makes me tired.
Currently, the boys are going 2 mornings a week - soon, it will become 5 mornings a week, and someone will have to go every week.