So, my regular and not-so-regular visitors know that I have in my household: One mommy, one daddy, two children, one kitty and one nanny. So that is five humans and one cat. The cat is old, she is sixteen. The children are young, and both Jason and I work full time +. I add the plus because an added benefit to our jobs is a sizable travel burden coupled with rather non-standard working hours. With all this as a factor, we decided to hire a live-in nanny to look after the kids. There was no way we could find a decent daycare, as we are scattered to the winds as far as job location, and with the travel burden it never made sense to have the kids in a day care near my job or close to Jason’s job. What would happen when one of us was on travel? We do stagger our travel time so the nanny is never completely alone with the kids, one of us is always home. We hired a young girl she was 24 when she arrived two years ago. She is very quiet. I like this. I never wanted some noisy, bossy person in my house. Unfortunately she is almost too quiet. She pretty much stays in her room, except every now and then she hangs out and then it feels weird. We don’t live in a huge house, so there really isn’t that much space, KWIM (know what I mean)?

We went on holiday last week, and in a effort to be nice I asked if she wanted to go along. At first she said no, then she changed her mind and said yes. You know, I must be a glutton for punishment. So we had booked in this lovely Marriott property that was a timeshare resort. It was fantastic and it had two bedrooms and lots of living space. I guess I had thought she would be sharing with the kids, but she didn’t want to. Okay, I reasoned that she had paid her own air travel down, and she was mostly paying her food bill. Of course we were paying for the room, the extra car rental for we need a van, etc. never mind, she wants her own room. Luckily, there was a sofa bed and the kids slept on that.

Well, she just kind of lurked around the hotel room. Honestly, I hadn’t expected to see her much. I thought she would be out on the beach, or at the pool, etc. She just kind of shadowed us everywhere. Very weird. We didn’t do much, we had the little ones so it was like, beach, pool, room, watch TV, find food, sleep, TV, pool, beach, go to playground, food, etc. That kind of thing. When we went to the pool, she went to the pool. When we went to the beach, she went to the beach. One day she did her own thing. She went with us to the Everglades and even though I knew she wanted to go on an airboat tour, she never went. Jason and I didn’t want to take the young ones on the noisy boat ride, but the nanny could have went. It’s not like we would have left here there. She never “worked”.

It was just having her there was a bit weird. You know, it kind of felt like going on holiday with someone you’re dating. It always seems like when you get home you break up. I never noticed how lazy she was, for example. Then I recalled she always put the kids in the car to drive them to Emma’s school, even thought it is literally a block from the house. Like, a three minute walk. I always kind of bent over backwards for her, but then the light went on in my brain and I thought, “bad economy”. I’ll bet there are lots of nannies out there right now who need work. Why should I cater to her?

The other thing is that I am really getting sick of someone who is not related to us, living with us. It is getting old. Really old. The older the kids get, the older it gets. There we are, sitting down enjoying an evening of tuning out, and she pops out of her room to do laundry or log onto the computer. It’s just a jolt, but one you don’t really appreciate. Especially as these are the years where we get these long, free evenings. Soon they will be gone. Unfortunately, I just don’t see any other way to have childcare that will mesh with our life, plus get the in-home privacy we crave.

Listen, you didn’t come here to hear me moan about my child care situation. The take home message is this. Don’t ever take your nanny on vacation with you unless you intend her to work. Then it will be your vacation, not hers and you will have to pay her for the week + give her that time in vacation for herself. If you don’t intend for her to work, then don’t take her. Trust me on this.

I just re-read this, and I know it sounds like I intensely dislike the nanny. This is not true. The fact is I find some of her habits annoying. That is all.

Post from: Pavlina: Life is Not For the Living

The Nanny vacation

See you next time!

Photos fixed!

Post from: Pavlina: Life is Not For the Living

Vacation

Fast forward to now…sitting in the Charlotte Douglas airport. Bloody airport so crowded I am sitting in an abandoned gate area. People everywhere. I had to all but disrobe to go through security. Okay, take shoes off, remover baggy of liquids/gels, take laptop out of case. Put everything in trays and on belt. Wait, hoping they don’t ask me to take off my suit jacket. Then pass under the arch, then picking up my laptop, baggy, shoes, wallet, purse, messenger bag, run to an empty bench. Begin to put things away, shoes on to realize left roller bag on belt. Run back, get roller bag, luckily no-one steals my stuff whilst back is turned. Go back to stuff, continue putting things back in pockets, etc and put shoes on. Then find closest ladies restroom, and change from suit into comfy pants and flats. Keep fancy shirt on because it is pretty and I like it. This is all done whilst balancing on one foot as to not actually contact restroom floor with bare skin of feet. Then leave stall and realize scalp is killing me from the fancy up-do, so remove all one hundred bobby pins and put pigtail in. Then find this seat after cruising through a bookstore carrying nothing that interested me or I had not already read.

Phew.

Can you imagine one of those hatted and gloved women from the 50s/60s going to the airport today? The removing of gloves and shoes. Then metal detector would go crazy from the garters/undergarments. They would be subject to all horrors of searching. Air travel is simply awful these days. I cannot stand it. The stupid lines. The ridiculous baggies. Why do I have to take my shoes off and laptop out? Why? Then it occurs to me I never had to dump my water out, as the x-ray cannot see through my stainless steel bottle, can it? I don’t think so. The only good thing about flying is that I will get home sooner than I could drive. Charlotte is about a 7-8 hour drive from my house, and I wouldn’t have left until 4pm, I’d say so I would be getting home at midnight. This way I get to suffer the indignities of flying, but I’ll be home no later than 8pm. I guess that I worth the four hours.

Post from: Pavlina: Life is Not For the Living

Air travel is for the birds