On Friday I babysat for some new kids. Well, I know the kids from my daycare center (I’m back at the old one, the new one was evil but for the sake of confidentiality I just won’t go there) but I had never sat for them before. The little one is in my classroom, he’s 3, and I’ll call him Avid Power Ranger Fanatic cause, well, that’s what he is. He’s this cute little butterball of a boy who has somehow managed to cultivate some weird sort of odd Brooklyn-esque accent despite being born and bred in Pittsburgh. He is also probably one of the most headstrong, willful, stubborn kids I’ve ever encountered as often times the brighter kids are. I hadn’t inflicted any severe damage on myself recently so I figured, why not take his mom up on a babysitting job. The evening went down like this…
I arrived at APRF’s house at 5:30 like his mom had told me to do. I rang the bell and waited. And rang the bell and waited. Began to get annoyed cause I had cut short Cabana time to help this woman out with her babysitting dilemma and now she wasn’t here with the babysittees. Before calling her cell phone I opted to knock…maybe the bell was broken. After my knock I heard a voice and a rustling from inside. The older brother finally opened the door, holding his cell phone and looking anxious.
“My mom told me to never open the door when I’m home alone so I had to call her and check to see if it was ok.”
“Sure,” I replied, openly respectful of the kid’s responsibility factor.
Then the fun really began as he paced around the room and glanced continuously out the window while telling me about summer camp. I began to feel an urgent sense of dread. Dear god, I thought, I have absolutely no interest in what this kid is rambling on about. How the hell am I ever going to be a good mom if I can only tolerate kids until they are 4 years old?? I’m semi-horrified that I find small humans that frequently sit in mounds of their own poo while rivers of slime pour from their noses and dangle gelatinously from their upper lips more engaging than a well intentioned, responsible nine year old.
Finally mom arrived with APRF in tow, sucking on a binky and telling me that he got a time out from his new black power ranger. This is apparently pretty devastating, despite the other two “old” black power rangers that he has scrounged up and shoved into a box that he is calling a rocket. Just then dad showed up with two pizzas and breadsticks. I got the general rundown of things and instructions to take the kids to the park and then mom and dad left, big brother took some pizza upstairs to eat in front of the tv and I was left trying to figure out how to get APRF to eat his pizza. After he lost interest in his Thomas the Tank Engine train set we went to the dining room and I put a slice and a breadstick on his plate, handed him his sippy cup and sat down to eat as well. we conversed about the crucial stuff, like how I wasn’t his mom’s first choice to babysit and how he would go back to school after “the sleep” aka night time. After several minutes of this dialogue the kid said, “I’m done” and started to get up. Then he sat down and said “I want more pizza” so I gave him another slice.
He took a nibble. “I’m done.” And he got up and went to the door. “I’m ready to go to the pawk”.
“You have to go potty first.”
“Nooooo! Yucky!”
“There’s no potty at the park and we don’t want you to peepee in your underwear.”
“Put me in a diapaw.”
“Look here, APRF, Mommy didn’t put a diaper int he travel bag. Your blue Power Ranger underwear are in there.”
At that APRF shuffled off into the bathroom while I cleared the table. Seconds later the bathroom doorknob rattled. “Let me out” he cried. So I did. And then I got a 10 minute demonstration of how to dump the potty pot into the real toilet (”you have to get aaallll the peepee out”). Then he looked up at me with longing eyes and said, “Now give me my blue Powew Rangew pants!”
We finally left the house to go to the pawk, er, the park and the whole way older brother regaled me with useless nine year old societal commentary while I tried to disarm APRF of the stick he was swinging at random imaginary evil monsters. Until we stumbled upon a massacred bird’s nest. First we saw a dead baby bird on the sidewalk, covered in flies, as dead things on a hot day often are.
“Woah” older brother gasped, turning an odd shade of grayish green.
“It’s ok,” I mumbled, trying to keep my own stomach from turning.
But then there was another one, and another, and a fourth, all a sickish shade of blue, featherless, and frozen into awful, open beaked death poses, naked and decomposing all around us. I grabbed the wee one’s hand and looked straight ahead, sidestepping the grisly scene, all the while reassuring older brother that it was ok, it couldn’t hurt us, and that we would walk back on the other side of the street. Once we were a few yards past the carnage I glanced at the older kid and asked if he was okay. He said yes but I could tell he was pretty upset. Hell, I was pretty upset. I mean, I realize it’s nature’s way and all but ugh, that was pretty harsh.
So we finally got to the park and I chased APRF around the climbers and slides while older brother tried to see how high he could get on the swings. APRF had climbed to the top of a climber and was doing some funny little running dance on the narrow metal catwalk above the slide when he suddeny l stopped and looked at me.
“Kowie”
“Yeah?”
“I’m gonna poop in my undeweah.”
“NO! Hold it! Can you hold it? Hold it! I’m coming up there!”
In one swift move I chucked the kid’s pants, yanked the spare diaper (yeah I had lied about being out of diapers….I’m an evil manipulative bitch, I know) out of the travel bag and slapped it on him with the expertise of a seasoned daycare worker who can change 17 two year olds while they’re standing up in under 30 minutes. Then I briskly pulled up his pants and we clambered back down to the ground.
On the way home (on the other side of the street) we stopped at the corner market and both boys picked a donut for dessert. They wanted the same donut and there was only one, so I got it and told them it was for both of them. When we got back, APRF asked for the donut so older brother went and split it.
“NOOOOO!” the wee one shrieked at full volume, “I. Want. My. DONUT!”
“Sweetie,” I cajoled, nearing the end of my rope at this point, “the donut is for both of you to share. I didn’t have enough to but you both a donut.”
“But he’s gonna eat it ALL! I WAAAANT IT!”
I gritted my teeth and smiled angelically. “You can share the donut. There’s enough for both of you.”
“NOOOOO!“

OK, so basically play that soundtrack for twenty more minutes in your head. When your ear drums feel like they’ve been peppered with red hot glass shrapnel and your brain starts hemorrhaging like mine did feel free to fast forward to bed time. The little one picked Rumble in the Jungle for his story and after every animal he asked “Why?” Approximately 10 “whys” later (and I am one of those morons who does indeed come up with an answer to each why that fits toddler logic) I tucked APRF in and settled in with older brother to watch some Drake and Josh on Tivo. Sadly, I laughed ten times harder at the slapstick ‘tween comedy than the nine year old.

My only explanation is that my brain had leaked out from the tatters that were my middle ear. Further brain leakage probably explains why I’m babysitting again for them this upcoming weekend.

My fabulous dinner of olives, sardines, l’il smokies and Snyder’s Pumpernickel ‘n’ Onion Pretzels (the fact that my boyfriend lives in Europe allows me the freedom to consume such a meal without shamefacedly banning myself from the bed for the remainder of the night… no amount of Colgate or Banaca could ease the suffering I would be putting my Cabana Boy through otherwise) prefaces the following thoughts:

1. Why the hell, after eating that kind of food, am I making a point to drink low-cal organic tea?

2. How exactly am I going to hit my parents with the fact that we (Cabana Boy and myself) are seriously looking into viable options that allow me to move to Belgium this coming January, rather than in a year and a half when I am/was due to complete my masters degree? (and yes I am intentionally posting this statement in a place where my parents may offhandedly stumble across it before I think of a good way to tell them. Confrontation is so much easier when mom calls on the phone and starts off with, “Daddy and I read your blog last night….” as opposed to me bumbling through dinner looking like I’m about to hurl and reassuring them that I’m feeling fine right up until the point where I say, “So, um, yeah, you know all those plans that I’ve been putting together for the past year or two? Fuck ‘em, I’m moving to Belgium, like, now.”)

2a. Now I’m just scrolling up and smugly drooling over my mastery of parentheticals.

3. Here’s the biggy though- today in class one of the topics we discussed was personal beliefs that we hold near and dear to our hearts; some tidbit or axiom, if you will, that we live our life by. This was mine: I honestly believe that if everyone did something good and positive every day, that we could change this shitstorm of a world that we live in. If one person would just let a pedestrian cross the street in the rain, even if their light is green and they’re running late, or pay the change for the person in front of them who is getting flustered and digging in their wallet for pennies - if everyone would do something small like that every day, I really think things could get better. Idealistic, I know, but just listen. On the way to the airport to pick up Cabana Boy last month, I was stuck in bumper to bumper traffic in godawful heat that made inhaling feel akin to huffing magma. I needed to get into the middle lane from the left and no one would let me in. So I sat there, sweat seeping from every pore on my skin, feeling angry and miserable while people behind me honked and glared and people to the right of me smirked like barring my entry to their lane was the most satisfying thing they had done that week. When suddenly, a young woman about my age in a dark Accord let me into the lane. I was so thankful to her and kept glancing in my rear view as traffic inched ahead and I felt truly bad when I saw how frustrated she looked sitting in that traffic. After about a half hour, I looked back and she was singing in the car (I’d been doing that the whole time. It’s the only place I really ever feel natural singing). Well damn if I didn’t smile and start singing louder! It made me sincerely happy to see that, with Carmageddon going on all around us, this nice person who allowed me a simple car-length of space in front of her was able to kick back and somehow find a way to enjoy the traffic in the exact same way I did. She let every car with a turn signal on get in front of her…and I did too. All of a sudden keeping my spot in the neverending line of vehicles on the parkway just didn’t seem as important anymore.

My generation is one of the most apathetic I think the world has ever seen. Nobody seems to care about the general welfare of others unless it’s trendy or they get some kind of reward for it. And the things we do dislike we neglect to change. We have no real issue or cause that we take a stand against. We have no revolutionaries, no visionaries, no one standing up and leading a fight for something right and genuinely good. We are beaten down by a sickening sense of helplessness and apathy in the face of the horrors that go on around us every day. So, if we can’t muster the sense of strength and indignant righteousness needed for something as massive as, say, civil rights or bringing troops home from the war, perhaps we can start small. Maybe it will lead to something bigger or maybe not, but let it never be said that we didn’t at least try. As it is so accurately stated in one of my favorite movies, The Boondock Saints: “Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men”.

So I’ll leave you with that sentiment on this fine summer evening, loyal readers. Take care and try to do something nice tomorrow.

Red Fox
My lover mentioned my recent literary silence today.
So I find myself contemplating
as I scrub the stale tobacco taste
from my tongue and lips,
the small red fox I saw on my late night drive through suburbia.
I traced the twisting back roads,
scouring the darkness, gleaning my thoughts,
compiling insight.
And there he was, small and unaware
as the headlights washed over him,
bathing his carroty coat, his round little head
in a cone of light.
He was picking at something, some meaningless road kill
and I desperately wanted to stop and watch him enjoy his meal.
But I drove on, sabotaging all my scaffolding,
sucking down dry plumes of sadness and anger,
missing my family, missing my lover,
mostly
missing myself.

I have my incense lit and pluming sexy Nag Champa scented smoke into the air, the cat is watching Dave Chapelle instead of torturously gnawing at my ankles and kneading my bare toes, my Monkey King Organic Jasmine Green Tea has been steeped for the appropriate three minutes, I’m chewing some raspberry flavored Orbit gum, and I even spent the last few hours cooking up some food for tomorrow. Why am I not inspired to write anything??? It could have something to do with my inner poet being disturbed by the hour long snaking session that the building superintendent had to do on my kitchen sink. I guess it could have been worse (like the time the poor guy had to come up and auger the toilet, which he followed up by embarrassing me even further in scolding me for flushing tampons). Or it could be that all day I’ve been suddenly realizing that my classes start next Saturday and I’m remembering all the work I’m going to have to do for them. I also have to fit in a lot more training for the TSS job that I haven’t started yet, and to be honest, I’m not sure if I have the energy to follow through on that. Quitting smoking may actually have been enough for me to not have to have a second job. This month’s budgeting was all sorts of screwed up between my Cabana reserve money and birthday money and figuring in extra spending and extra gas money….well, I’m actually looking ok for this month, without the second job. I’m tired. Very, very tired of the two jobs and school and babysitting thing. I’m almost starting to regret taking last week off, if only because it made me remember how good it feels not to work every single day. To actually have time to get chores and things done. To spend more than just the time it takes to wake up, shower and go to sleep in my apartment. I guess last week gave me a preview of what I’ve been wanting for such a long time now: the time to enjoy myself, my surroundings, the company of someone I love, and life in general. So, in one move I yanked off my blinders and got to see the world outside of my one major goal. It had two effects. It has made me realize that there are other, more important things out there besides work and school (which I knew before, but now I feel it in my gut as well as think it in my head). It has also driven my desire to finish school into maximum overdrive. I am really struggling to not bail on my lease, quit my job, move home and go to school full time RIGHT NOW. I would have done that in the past, but now I’m trying to be an adult and plod through the next six months like I had originally planned. Only now, between the money I’m saving on cigarettes and the money I’m saving on benefits at the new job, I may be able to avoid taking the second new job.

Well.

I guess my free flowing, poetic machinations are going to remain limited to my fridge magnets this evening. Seems the real world has too strong a hold on my thoughts to allow for any blogariffic whimsy.

My Cabana Boy finally came to visit me this past week and despite my skepticism and tendency to expect the worst, everything went as good as it possibly could have.
Day 1: Found that I could walk about ten miles in 80 degree heat and not pass out. Also found someone who eats as fast as I do.
Day 2: Found that I can walk another five or so miles the day after walking ten miles and still be ok to babysit. Also, a grown man will take the word of a three year old kid on which shoe goes on which foot (even if it’s wrong- but apparently I’m the one with no common sense, go figure).
Day 4: When it comes to amusement parks, I think I’ll always be a kid at heart….oh and it is possible to burn standing in line for rides, even if you’re not a pale Belgian man
Day 5: Drunk birthday nookie is good, no matter how old you are. Be sure to have some sort of recording device present, so you don’t wake up the next morning and wonder if the meaningful things said were real or imagined (in my case it was real, but it took me two days to confirm this)
Day 6: Being 26 isn’t so bad when a spontaneous Cabana Boy follows you into your morning shower. However, if said shower event occurs, one should not shove the curtain liner out of the way with one’s foot, lest flooding of one’s bathroom floor, and subsequently, the ceiling of the office below occur. Dude, then the building superintendant comes up and knocks at your door and you have to answer all frazzled and wrapped in a towel, with no blood in your brain, and then he smirks at you and chuckles, telling you to be sure to shower with the curtaininsidethe tub. Also, no matter how docile a cat may seem, do not let your boyfriend talk you into taking a walk with the cat outside. The cat will spazz and maul your boyfriend, traumatizing all human and felines involved. The upside is a lot of “rampaging pussy” jokes can ensue and keep you giggling for the rest of the night.

All in all, the week was great. I’m already planning my trip to Belgium for this winter, and trust me, it can’t come soon enough.