You know how while you’re in the middle of talking, you can have a conversation with yourself in your head at the speed of light?  (It’s not just me, is it?)  Well, that happened to me this week, but it turns out that I’m not a great person to have those conversations with.

I was saying goodbye to a colleague and friend who was going on maternity leave.  ‘Bye’ didn’t seem quite enough so I started to say ‘Have a lovely…’ And then realised I didn’t know how to finish the sentence.   I do have a habit of saying entirely the wrong thing when my brain isn’t engaged and half the HR department were in earshot at this particular moment.  So this is what happened:

‘Bye!  Have a lovely…’

Lovely what? If I say ‘time off’ I’m pretty sure someone will think I’m implying it’s an easy 6-12 months.  If I say ‘3 weeks’ (that’s how long before the bump is due), it suggests the next 18 years or so don’t have the chance to be lovely. ‘Lovely rest of the day’ is a little too short term. ‘Lovely birth’ is entirely inappropriate.  What do I say?  What do I say? She’s going to have a baby…

So the genius that came out of my mouth after that really helpful conversation in my head was:

‘Bye!  Have a lovely….baby’

For the record, this was not a good choice of words either, although it did make some people giggle….

And in other little people news, a lady on a Facebook group I belong to is putting together Christmas parcels for the local Special Care baby unit.  She asked for knitted or crocheted hats and I couldn’t resist.  I couldn’t find any teeny tiny patterns that I liked, so I got the measurements that prem baby units request hats in and came up with my own designs.  They are really teeny tiny :o)