Me and My Pack of Dogs: Babysitting

This week has been, once again, quite hectic. It's a good thing I got a car that I enjoy driving so much with all of the driving I've done. Thursday I went to a meeting in Riverside where I had to seriously choose my attitude or I would have tossed a table and walked out making an absolute fool of myself. I did not. I sat very quiet seething inside and trying not to think that I wasn't in my classroom with kids for that bunch of bullshit. After, I took myself to lunch at the bar.

Then I drove to San Clemente where I picked up Max, the 19 month old who travels with more luggage than a Real Housewife. We drove back to the desert with little ado and when we got to my house for our first sleepover with a memory there was a large conversation in which the only words I could make out were "Grandma...back...car" with a large amount of gesturing towards the car. Luckily Max is pretty easy to put to sleep and was fast asleep within a few moments. Then I let the Pack in and told them that if they made any noise at all I would shoot them. (They didn't believe me because I don't have a gun.)

Friday Max accompanied me to school where is was the beau of the ball. High school is the best place to find a babysitter because there's so many kids. Every time he walked away from me there were at least five kids fighting over who was going to play with him. We had a minor hiccup when the Cookie Monster doll we stole from Gretchen's prop room lost his eyes on our way to visit Jessica. Jenny tried to perform Cookie Monster ocular surgery in the field, but it was unsuccessful and I had to keep Cookie's eyes in my pocket. Then an even bigger catastrophe befell us when we were returning from looking at the cows- Cookie was abandonèd somewhere between the cows and my room. I sent five kids out to look for him, but he was lost. We consoled ourselves with goldfish. All was not lost because Jessica found him hanging out in the A-6 lost and found and returned him after school. It was a mostly fabulous day because Max was so happy, though 6th period he was starting to lose it alternately walking up to kids and screaming and laying on the floor saying, "nite-nite?" We came home as soon as we could and he was asleep before I even shut the door.

Then began the slow decline of the evening. His father came and swung him around and he threw up. Then he threw up again in the bedroom and his father insisted he have a bottle. Then his father left and me and Jessica and Sara were allowed to continue our evening when Max spewed forth an amount of baby barf that was truly impressive for such a little person. I quickly picked up the baby barf volcano and put him in the bath and Sara, in a sign of true, true friendship, cleaned up and Jessica swiffered.

"Baby barf- still a fan of the condom" Sara, Friday evening

We got the baby sleep fairly easily, but our day started again at 5 am when he woke up cranky and whiney and it stayed that way all day. He didn't even enjoy meeting Randi and Earl. (Possibly because Earl tried to lick off his ear.) Mostly Randi and Earl were like what the fuck is that?? The morning continued fantastically with another episode of barfing and another impromptu bath and then a monster nap in which I tried to catch up on some tv. Yes, there were tons of other things I could have been doing: paying bills, seeing about refinancing, blogging, reading, but I thought fuck it. This is my first day of vacation and I'm going to lay here and watch TV. Once Max woke up, I could only stand about an hour before I packed up all of his stuff to take him back to my mom's thinking maybe he was just tired of me and would want to play on his slide until my parents came home. My mom and dad were already home and he tried to act like I hadn't fed or given him anything to drink at all. Then he proceeded to be cranky and whiney with them.

When I finally got home I took a bath with Max's bath toys.