There is one organization that I have been a member of for near a decade. I have published in their journal, I regularly review articles that are submitted to their journal, and I attend and speak at their conferences. But I’ve never thought to get involved at an administrative level, which would mean really immersing myself in the organization’s inner sanctum, and contributing to its welfare. Recently, however, the editor of the journal the Society hosts suggested I run for office this term. I thought about it. On the one hand, it meant committing time I can’t imagine I have, and attending the two major conferences a year, which can be pretty much anywhere in the country. On the other, this was the opportunity to participate in something I believe in and care about. I guess teaching at an Ivy League university, where everyone is earnestly involved up to their eyeballs influenced my decision: I looked around at my messy, messy house, took stock of the (virtual) stack of papers to comment on, pulled Baby MoFo up on my lap, and began to write my nomination statement.

“I am organized, efficient, and capable . . .”

Four nights later found me running through campus, wearing PJs, boots, and a jacket. No socks, no bra. It was 11:30 at night and I had not forgotten that stack of papers at school (it was virtual, after all), nor was I meeting with a student at that late hour. I had been lying in bed, about to drift off into unconsciousness, when my mind starting running through all matter of things:

1. I never did anything about that hunk of pasta sauce stuck in my engagement ring I noticed a few nights ago while I was on my way to parent-teacher interviews. I should probably stick it in the jewelry cleaner.

2. I forgot to pay for the Daddy-and-me Gymnastics night. Crap. Hope there’s still room.

3. I have to open blocks on my online calendar so the students can schedule their conferences since they begin in just a couple of days.

4. I should take my coat to the seamstress–the buttons look like they’re about to fall off.

5. I really have to start revising that article if I’m going to have it workshopped by my faculty peers next month. Which reminds me, I have to go to the library. They’re going to cancel my hold order again if I don’t pick up the books soon.

6. I should have loaded the dishwasher before bed. I’m going to regret that pile in the sink when I wake up.

7. Even the counter is cluttered with dishes. That must be unsanitary.

8. Were my rings sitting in that counter clutter? I don’t think I wore them all day.

9. I don’t think I wore my rings yesterday.

10. Have I seen my rings since I discovered the hunk of pasta sauce on them 3 days ago?

11. Yes, I did see my rings. I was playing with them while I was trying to revise my article in my office the other day, wasn’t I? Wasn’t that after the parent-teacher interview? But I wouldn’t have taken them off and left them at school, right?

12. WHERE ARE MY RINGS?

I jumped out of bed, went downstairs, looked in all the usual places: sitting on top of the microwave, on the kitchen counter, on the dining room table, on one of the bookshelves. Nada. I told myself to be calm and I did #6–loaded the dishwasher. That way, either I would have an empty counter and sink and also find my rings (could they have fallen in the sink? Could they have fallen down the drain?) or, at worst, I would have an empty counter and sink and one or two fewer things to worry about. I did my nice service for next-day me, but my heart started pounding harder as I put the last plate in the dishwasher: No rings. I took everything off the table. I pulled off the table cloth, checked it thoroughly and shook it out (not from the 21st floor–so my rings couldn’t have the adventure you must remember they had last year!). Nada. I picked loose Lego brick, pens, opened mail, DVDs, Wii games, and crumpled receipts off the bookshelves. Nada. Cleared the microwave surface of a bag of rice cakes, a container of Jane’s Krazy Salt, and The Scientist’s deodorant (huh?). Nada.

I finally decided I was driving myself crazy–that they were, of course, somewhere, and I went to bed again.

Once there, a rendition of Scarlett played through my head: “I can’t let [my rings] go [again]. I can’t. There must be some way to bring [them] back. Oh I can’t think about this now! I’ll go crazy if I do! I’ll think about it tomorrow. But I must think about it. I must think about it. What is there to do? What is there that matters?”

And so, near midnight, I was sprinting through the campus, hoping not to see my students, or rather, hoping they wouldn’t see me, and hoping, moreover, that I hadn’t been so stupid as to play with my rings in my office and then just leave them lying on my desk, and hoping, even more than that, that I had left my rings lying around on my desk or in my wastebasket or in my coffee mug or on my coat hook–anywhere, anywhere, that they could be found again.

I opened my office door.

No rings.

I sorted through the papers and lifted my mug and looked in it and under it; I pushed books hither and thither; I  checked my coat hook and wastebasket and recycling bin; and finally, deflated, I called The Scientist to say that they were gone–lost forever. As he answered the phone, I absentmindedly lifted up my keyboard. And underneath–

“They’re here! I didn’t lose them!!!”

I am organized, efficient, and capable . . .

Which is true, for the most part, and saved me over the next week, which is to say, this past week, during which time I taught my 2 classes twice; prepped for my classes; commented on 24 essays, which takes, according to our program’s requirements, about 36 hours; met with each of my students individually for 45 minutes, conferences scheduled around their busy lives, so that the 22 hours I was at or going to or returning from conferences included hours early in the morning and past 10:30pm; stayed home with my baby for the afternoon of President’s Day when there was (I was late to discover) no daycare; went to the dentist for a cleaning and a check-up; did my usual triple pick-up of the kids most days (and took them for frozen yogurt on the particularly warm day) as well as about half the drop-offs; made all three meals for everyone every day; took the baby to the doctor when the daycare sent him home (and said he couldn’t return) because he had pink eye; and all this, I should add, with no sleep since, in addition to pink eye, Baby MoFo also developed an ear infection –actually, a double-ear infection — this week, and he suffered all through the night.

I am organized, efficient, and capable . . .

But my house can often be a madhouse, and as a result, I might act as though I’ve been lobotomized . . .

Oh–but vote for me!!

A calm(ish) moment in our madhouse (in case you're wondering, Baby MoFo is about the fall off the couch, cry, and then take off his diaper and pee on the floor)

Having a newborn is shockingly exhausting. You might, as I did, do amazingly stupid things. You might, as I did, brew a pot of coffee and stand over it, watching every drip, and when it was done, pour the whole thing into a jar of peanut butter instead of a coffee mug and then be helpless to do anything about the ruined coffee (and ruined peanut butter) but sob uncontrollably. You might forget to wear breast pads, as I did numerous times, and watch, again helplessly, as dark circles form on your shirt in a public place and grow bigger and bigger. You might not have the state of mind to forgive the stupidity of others: To wit, I seethingly asked a cashier if she had ever taken a biology class when, two days before Cool J’s bris, she looked at the baby and looked at me and said, “You’re already so far along with your next baby and you have this little baby? That must be so hard.” Clearly she was a kind and sympathetic soul who had really not taken a biology class. You might go to the video store and leave your baby sitting in the car, blissfully forgetting you ever had a baby (this I attribute to another family member) or fall asleep with the baby in your bed and dream the baby is a wild animal that’s attacking (this is a very reasonable dream for a new mother) and in response, you bite the animal (and by extension, your real, newborn baby lying next to you) (this, too, I attribute to another family member, who shall remain nameless) (hi sister). There is a reason Canada offers a paid maternity leave (separate, one should note, from the longer parental leave that follows it). It is very difficult to think coherently in that hormone-bubbling, sleepless, every-day-offers-new-wonders-and-agonies stage. It is very difficult to do the jobs of getting dressed, feeding yourself, feeding your family, and not crying. I can’t imagine doing another job, as well.

In the last two weeks, I feel my brain has reverted to its much-unloved Baby Brain stage.

To review:

1. I lost my car keys, house keys, and car remote in a small, enclosed space, where it would seem they would be easily retrievable, but somehow I never found them.

2. I put my cell phone in the washing machine. I turned on the washing machine. Rice trick, rice shmrick. It didn’t survive.

3. I put earbuds in the washing machine. Ditto.

4. I put a pish-filled diaper in the washing machine. It exploded. I had to run that same load three times to get all the disgusting absorbent gel balls out of our clothes. Tell me when you see a pattern, by the way, or want to hire me a maid because I’m clearly doing too much laundry.

This is from a website asking if cloth diapers are right for you. The gel balls that fill the inside of a diaper are revolting. Imagine them all over your clothes.

5. I told The Scientist that I was sure one of our babysitters had stolen the ink out of our printer. When he expressed disbelief, I convinced him that even if she didn’t happen to have a printer just like ours, she could take the cartridges into Staples and get money for recycling them. I angrily went out and spent $60 on new cartridges. Then I tried to jam them into our printer in a morning panic . . . but they didn’t fit. So I yanked The Scientist out of the shower and told him I had to print something Right! Now! and I needed his help. He obliged . . . and then discovered the problem. “How can you get these cartridges in the printer when the old ones are still inside?”

6. I got my room assignment for my new Spring semester course and was handed a key and told to make sure all was fine with the room. But rather than go check it out in advance–and I had plenty of time, seeing as it is February and Spring semester is just beginning–I showed up on the first day expecting everything to just fall into place. Instead, I discovered a) my card didn’t open the building door, b) my key didn’t open the classroom door, and c) there was no laptop in the room for me to use. I am sure I was a picture of unruffled professorialness as I greeted my new students.

7. I took out Hitchhiker audio books for our long drive for winter break. On return, I discovered one of the CDs was missing from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I searched high and low and low and high–nothing. I renewed it as many times as I could and then returned the boxes for Hitchker’s Guide and Restaurant with a missing CD for the latter–which, of course, the library noticed. I conveyed an appropriate measure of surprise, then apologized profusely and said that we must have never gotten the CD in the first place–what else could the reason be? (my car is not an abyss of of school projects and snack wrappers and coffee cups and toys . . . surely not). She said to keep looking. I said I would, but, of course, I was sure that I couldn’t possibly have it. Meanwhile, I kept getting overdue notices and I irritatedly wrote the library an email saying that my audiobook wasn’t overdue, I was just (theoretically) searching for the CD . . . and please stop harassing me, will ya? And they wrote back, “No problem.” Then I went into the library a few days later, and the librarian said, “Do you still have Life, the Universe and Everything?” I said, “No! I have already explained several times that I don’t have it and it ought to be taken off my record immediately!” As I walked out, I thought to myself, Hmmm . . . she must be a Douglas Adams fan, since the missing CD is from Restaurant and she accidentally said Life . . . which is funny because she was looking right at her screen when she said it. Lalalalalala . . . And then yesterday, when I was searching the car high and low and low and high for the GPS which had absolutely and definitely disappeared into the abyss . . . I found . . . the box of Life, The Universe and Everything and in it, apart from all its own CDs, the other missing CD–from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Well, that, I’m afraid, is something of the short list.

Three kids in, and I guess the fact is, this is no longer Baby Brain. This is my brain.

This is your brain on Baby. And pre-baby. And post-baby. Especially if there are lots of babies.

PP in labor (I'm not *that* big, am I?)

Then she asked: “Did you make books like this for all your boys?”

I pointed to the thick stack of albums taking up half a shelf on my bookshelf. “All those are about LL,” I said. I also kept a journal about LL–when he rolled over and when he sat up, when he crawled and when he first talked . . .

“And what about Cool J?”

Poor. Middle. Child.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Luckily, Cool J has made his own book. And while it doesn’t quite chronicle the adventures of his birth (3 contractions or so and he was out–not much of a story there!) or bris (snip! all done) or milestones (in his case, the time he ran into an elevator alone in a 50-story building, the time elevator doors closed on his finger, the time he fell out of the attic hatch . . .), it does chronicle his feelings. And his many wonderful facial expressions. And those things that are most important to him. And really–what more could one ask for as a keepsake?

……………

This blog post was inspired by:

This was my first day of work at my current (wonderful!) job. Note the piles of laundry in the background. I was so excited to GET! OUT! Bu-bye, messy house!!

At almost 2, Baby MoFo is still babyish. Apart from general cuddliness and the inability to pee in the toilet, he pretty much refuses to talk. I call him “The Artist.” He knows to clench his fists and growl when he sees a picture of a lion. And he has the essentials: I (iPad), Elmo, Uno, more, mayonnaise, shoes, . . . that kind of thing. And “no,” which he uses frequently. For a long time we thought it was only “no” and not “yes,” but recently he surprised us when asked a series of yes/no questions:
“Are you a good boy?” “No.”
“Do you love your mama?” “No.”
“Do you love your brothers?” “No.”
“Did you make a kak?” “No.”
“But you stink.” “No.”
“Are you lying?” “No”

[Change poo]

[Cool J, in the meantime, is trying to translate for his baby brother. "He says 'NO' when he means 'YES.' He just doesn't know HOW to say 'YES.' Watch this: MoFo, can you please give me that Mario Kart toy?" MoFo: "No." Cool J yanks the toy out of Baby MoFo's hand and Baby MoFo starts to cry. Cool J: "He's crying because he tried so hard to say yes, and he couldn't. Thanks for the toy!"]

“Are you scrunching your brothers?” “No.”
“Stop scrunching your brothers!” “No.”
“Did you make your brothers CRY?” “No.”
“I’m going to give you a time-out! Do you want a time-out? Are you a bad little baby?” “Yes.”

Well, there was that.

Mostly, he just motions to us when he wants to communicate. Like on Friday, when I went into Cool J’s school office to talk to them about billing, and of course, Baby MoFo came with me. That’s what the SAHM life is all about. You go somewhere, baby goes somewhere with you. Baby MoFo was waiting, not so patiently, digging around in recycling bins, digging through my pockets, opening my wallet, dumping its contents on the floor .  . .As I set off to leave the school, in the pouring rain, I reach into my pocket to take out my car remote and do a quick click-click to open up his door, when I discover my pocket is empty. Wallet, probably missing a credit card or two, is in one pocket, and the other pocket is empty. I rush back into the school to look for my keychain holding my car remote, car key, and house keys. It is nowhere to be found.

I look suspiciously at the baby. “Do you know where the car keys are?” No answer.

“Where are the keys?” No answer.

“¿Dónde están los llaves?”

“Ou sont les clefs?”

“?איפה המפתחות”

“Ha a kulcsok?”

We try all the languages of the house. Sometimes we think he’s not an artist, but perhaps English is not his first language.

No luck. And then, suddenly, he races into the school office and points at the radiator. We look inside. Nothing. We get a flashlight, look in it, over it, under it, behind it. Nothing.

Sometimes his non-verbal communication is not great.

Which is unfortunate, because The Scientist was out of country, and we were locked out of house and car for many hours.

*         *             *                  *                       *

This morning the non-verbal communication was not great, again.

I dared to go to the bathroom alone. It’s risky business, and I knew it.

I was in there for 1 minute.

I spent the one minute thinking of all the mischief Baby MoFo might be up to. Mostly I was thinking about my cup of coffee sitting on the table not too far away from my laptop.

When I emerged from the bathroom, Baby MoFo looked pretty innocent. Also, naked. He had, in the one minute I was not watching him, taken off his footy-pajamas and diaper. So cute.

Except. What’s that? A ball of kak on the floor.

“Did you kak?” “No.”

“Did you make a kaka?” “No.”

“Is that kaki on the floor?” “No.”

“Is there more kaki?” “No.”

As I crawled around the house, picking up balls of kak, I thought about my new semester starting up again in a little over a week. A lot of people who teach get anxious as the new semester rolls around (I was just reading a post by one of my favorite bloggeristas– MannahattaMama –about this feeling). I get excited. Work? Work! Work!

And then I see another kaki ball. And another.

His poor mom, urged to talk, manages two words: Family therapy.

His poor dad, meanwhile, comes to life with a story about an enormous fit The Scientist took one day on the way to shul. And on the way home. In the snow. Then his poor dad is muttering again.

And so, as you might imagine, when I got a note home from school last week informing me that LL “shows no respect for the teacher,” I looked accusingly at The Scientist. “What?” he asked. “I didn’t do anything!”

Harumph.

A day after the note, LL was being wild as he was getting into the car. I asked him to stop. He didn’t. I asked him to stop. He didn’t. I asked him to GET! HIS! BUTT! IN! HIS! SEAT! He did–stepping, to get there, on the cup holder and breaking it.

The next evening we had a babysitter. “How did it go?” I asked.

She hesitated.

“What did he do?” I didn’t even know which “who,” but I had a pretty strong suspicion it wasn’t Baby MoFo.

“He yelled a lot. And said the F word.”

“The big one?”

“And then the middle one after him.”

Fuck.

What to do with this kid? That was the day I decided it was time for military school.

Oh yes, it sounds cliché, I know, but really, what does one do with a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad boy?

Someone recommend Alyson Schafer’s Honey I Wrecked the Kids, but the subtitle scared me off. If I can’t “Yell . . ., Scream . . ., Threat[en], Bribe . . ., [use] Time-outs, Sticker Charts [or] Removing Privileges . . .,” what the heck is left?

So I yelled (“What’s wrong with you??? How could you speak that way??”). And screamed (“AAAAAAAAAAh”). I threatened to throw out the Wii (military school being too abstract). I tried bribing him that he could get a $100 Lego if he was good (January is the month for fantastic Lego sales). I sent to his room for Time-Outs. I made a sticker chart to reward him for making beds and putting away Lego. I told him he couldn’t have afterschool snacks.

And all that failed (eh, screw you, Alyson Schafter, parenting guru extraordinaire).

So I cut out all sugar (it so happened Mama was on a sugar-free cleanse that week . . . as well as caffeine-free, alcohol-free, gluten-free, animal product-free, chemical-free  . . . which might have added to the yelling a wee bit).

And when that wasn’t enough, I moved bedtime from 8pm to 7pm.

And I got rid of the Wii.

And guess what?

THE KIDS WERE FREAKING AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

. . . .

until we brought back the Wii this weekend. And then they were less awesome.

So we took away the Wii again.

Did that do the trick?

Oh yes!

At 6:50 this morning, my darling little 6-year-old jumped out of bed. He got dressed. He brushed his teeth. He went downstairs. He poured himself a bowl of Cheerios with milk. He ate it. He took his bowl to the sink and wiped the table.

Bleary-eyed, I was getting Baby MoFo out of his crib when LL came back upstairs. He took MoFo from me and led him to the bathroom and helped him brush his teeth. Then he brought the baby downstairs, holding his hand step by step, and poured him a bowl of Cheerios with milk. When I came down, LL was playing the car game with Baby MoFo: “Open the garage door for Elmo’s car . . .”

Was this the same kid I threatened to send to military school last week??

At the end of the day today, I picked LL up from his bus. First he excitedly told me about his new spelling words (this is a kid who insisted on going to school half-sick on Friday, despite my recommendation that he stay home and hang out with me and watch TV, because he didn’t want to miss his weekly spelling test). Then he said, “Mama, the sandwich you made me for lunch was so yummy! Thank you, Mama!” Then he said, “Can I help you give the baby a bath?” The he said, “Mama, can I help you make dinner? You always make the best dinners.”

Then I got suspicious.

“Sweetheart, are you being nice just to be nice?”

“No, I want to earn Wii back. If I’m super super nice, can I earn one day of Wii back?”

Ah . . . of course. Well, I should probably just take advantage of the nice . . . What do you think Schafer would think of –not bribing exactly –just kind of stringing a kid along, you know, suggesting good things might happen if he’s exceedingly nice for an exceedingly long time . . . ?

A good, happy boy at his siddur ceremony

In my native Canadia, amongst my friends, nannies are very common. There is live-in caregiver program in Canada, which allows caregivers to come to Canada and establish permanent residency. According to the Canadian government HR website, “Live-in caregivers working in Canada under the Live-in Caregiver Program may choose between two options for calculating their employment requirement for permanent residence:

• 24 months of authorized full-time employment, or
• 3,900 hours (within a minimum of 22 months which may include a maximum of 390 hours of overtime) of authorized full-time employment.”

Most of these nannies come from the Philippines, and many have wonderful, long-term relationships with the families they come to live with and work for. Furthermore, the financial benefits run both ways: the nannies make substantially more in Canada than they would in, say, Hong Kong (generally with far better living conditions), and for the Canadian family, the cost of a nanny is about equal to the cost of one child in daycare (so if you have more than one child and you need to decide between a nanny and daycare, in terms of cost alone, the choice is obvious).

All this is to say, I wish someone would watch my kids, cook my meals, and do my laundry. There, I said it.

Nanny-employers got a bad rap in this book/film . . .

When I moved to this side of the border, I first looked for someone to watch my kids. Which I could find, I discovered, for about $15/hour.

I also looked for someone to clean the house. No problem, as long as I’m willing to shell out $25/hour–and then come home and clean the toilet and the kitchen, since apparently they’d been missed.

Yet still, I was convinced that somewhere out here, in bounteous America, there had to be someone who wanted to work for me for, say, $14/hour, and do some laundry, be a wonderful playmate for my children, and scrub my toilet.

And I found her!

We spoke on the phone:

Me: “Hi, Would you like to come to my house to meet us and talk about employment?”

Nan: “You me need?”

Me: “YES! Can I give you my address? Can you come by on Sunday? 1pm?”

Nan: “Meet at library?”

Me: “OK, library.”

Nan: “OK, bye.”

Me: “Wait–how will I know it’s you??”

Nan: “Sunday no good?”

Me: “No, I mean, like, will you wear red?”

Lady in red?

Nan: “Better at 2?”

Me: “No, but how will I find you?”

Nan: “Saturday?”

Me: “No, no!”

This conversation, dear reader, should have rung some bells. How can you employ someone with whom you have no means of communication? Maybe what should have also rung some bells was that she was so readily available, or that she was willing to do for $14/hour what she should have been charging at least double, and maybe triple for.

But I determined to learn some Spanish, determined it would be wonderful to have my children exposed to a new language and a new culture, and yes, I determined to have my neverending piles of laundry diminished, and my peed on and peed around and peed near toilet and floor scrubbed, and my children entertained by Spanish tales more authentic than Diego provided. All would be perfect!

It didn’t work out that way.

We hired Nan.

At first, things went well. I came home and the baby was sleeping soundly, the beds were made, and, without my asking, the fridge had been meticulously wiped down. Nan continued to come, and I continued to be sure that the money was well spent. I pulled Baby MoFo, who was going to daycare 4 days a week, out of yet another day of daycare, dropping him down to 3. Admittedly, from the first days, Nan often came late–somewhere between 10 minutes and 20, but I didn’t worry too much.

Then she came an hour late. Then 2.

Then I started looking for clothes I had put in the washing machine when she came, asking her to throw them in the dryer, fold them, and put them away. I discovered them stuffed in a bag (each piece crumpled into a little ball), hidden in Baby MoFo’s room. Despite my repeated requests that she fold the clothes rather them hide them, this trend continued.

Then I started noticing that although the floor had that clean vinegary smell, it was covered in granules of rice and other debris. It turned out than while she was washing the floor, she wasn’t first sweeping or vacuuming it first.

Evidence of Nan's cleaning: our bookcase tiers are "decorated" with cleaning utensils, a kippah, my cosmetics case, garbage, and clean laundry (that *I* folded).

Whereas friends in Canada swear their nannies save them $100s with their economical ways–they hang clothes to dry! they wash and reuse baggies! they carefully pack up and save all leftover meals in tupperware neatly stacked in the fridge!–mine ran the dishwasher with one glass and two plates in it. And since she never rinsed said glass and two plates first, they often had to be washed again.

One day I came in while she was feeding Baby MoFo his lunch. It was a bowl of the chili I had made–full of beans and veggies and other good stuff–she had warmed it up and then mixed in potato chips and chocolate chips cookies.

The toilet never got scrubbed.

One day when I was leaving the house at 9am, I saw her giving Baby MoFo another wonderful meal: a Lifesaver. Apart from the fact that Baby MoFo was 18 months old!, could have choked and died, and never needed to be eating candies, it was 9am! Was this breakfast?? Luckily, I caught her. She looked at me: “No good?”

I breathed deeply. “No good.”

It was around then that I decided to admit the truth: things were not going well. It was time to let her go.

But how? How? How?

I couldn’t do it. All I could think of doing was pretending I went to Florida and never came back.

Dear Nan, Here's Baby MoFo in Florida. We're having so much fun, we may never come back. All the best, PP

And then, miracle of miracles: she quit.

I hugged her, wished here well, and was thrilled.

Two days later, she called and asked for her job back. I hedged. I said we were going to Florida and I didn’t know when we would be back.

Shortly thereafter, in my absence, she left at the house boxes and boxes of Christmas presents–for me, for the house, for the kids. Talk about guilt.

I waited a long, long time before I called her. But how could I not say thank you?

Nan: “You me need?”

Ass that I am, I said: “Yes.”

But reader, this story ends on a happy note.

No, I didn’t suddenly grow some cojones.

Yesterday, a blustery January day, Nan came over. She fed the kids garbage, she threw out that one piece of Lego that makes the whole 875-piece spaceship stay together, she hid our clean laundry, and she made the bed using our waterproof mattress cover as a sheet, BUT–here’s what else happened:

I decided to go get some work done at Starbucks. I went into the shed to get my bike. Suddenly, a gust of wind whipped the door of the shed closed. The pin fell into the hole of the lock, and hearing the little “click,” I immediately realized: I was trapped!

I tried not to panic (I was panicking). Suddenly I remembered that, miracle of miracles, I had my lousy, rarely-charged, pay-as-you-go cell phone with me. I kissed said phone. I called Nan.

“Nan!! Help!!! I am locked in the shed!! Get me out!!!!”

(In my state, I forgot that classic Diego line: “Ayudame! Ayudame!”)

Ayudame! Ayudame!

Nan: “Baby OK?”

Me: “I hope so. You have him. It’s me! I’m in the shed!”

Nan: “Wash sheets?”

Me: “YES, wash sheets! But that’s not what I need right now! Come to the backyard!!”

I finally did make myself understood.

And so, signs from the universe tell me that perhaps I should keep this nanny . . . although signs of my peed-on, unwashed bathroom floor tell me otherwise . . . What to do . . . what to do . . .