Commiseration with friends: The Hunt for After-School Care

This has been one mother of a ride.

At the same time I was declaring my frustrations about hiring Ms. Poppins - both in this venue and all over Facebook - a friend from college was doing the same.  He claimed that he had emailed more 20 year old women than a man his age had any business doing.

This may be my newest indicator of middle age: those with whom you drank copious quantities of beer and played hearts till you were sober while in your twenties are now, twenty years later, those with whom you commiserate about finding someone willing to work for you for 10-15 hours/week.

For the record, I still can't play hearts in a state of anything other than youthful inebriety.

I thought I'd found someone.  Three interviews, 20 plus "cold calls", and so forth...candidate #1 just had no sass to her soul.  Candidate #2 was trained as an educator and "got" the Demie Diva on an educational level that was AWESOME.  Candidate #3 showed up with her roots showing, in what an older generation would have called "hot pants", and with what one might kindly term "cake up" a couple shades too dark for her skin tone.  Needless to say, Candidate #2 got the offer - and kept me hanging.

I finally pushed it...and got the "careful consideration, not a fit" - yeah.  The irony, of course, is that she is a teacher without a job, in my specialty, and I'm a department chair.  Oh, beauty.  She shot herself in the foot soooo badly.  Still and all, everything happens for a reason.

My reason is a woman about my age, who we shall call Suzy Chapstick.  Well, not really, but baby, Mary Poppins she isn't.  She's got a country accent, and some Southern bits of vernacular (fixin' to, for instance) that are enough to make my educated Yankee soul cringe.  Except that she understands my daughter well enough to give her time to warm up to her.  She speaks Schnauzer; it's a language.  The Diva Chien is a small person.  She's arty, liberal, and as ADHD as I am.  She doesn't want reimbursement for miles, and will push a vacuum and/or dust cloth around my house when the Demie Diva is otherwise occupied.

By the time she left my house the day we met, the Demie Diva was having her read to her, and was snuggled on the couch.

This all starts tomorrow, since I have a 1/2 day of meetings Monday and Tuesday this week.

Sigh.

I've had fun with my daughter during the last month of our summer.  I am NOT ready to bring that fun to an end.

I haven't said that in about 15 months.  Isn't it marvelous?