Life has been anything but normal lately - unless living out of boxes is normal. Trying not to ask for help with the move turned out to be a very bad idea. We ended up begging for help at the last minute and I think that’s more irritating for people than planning to spend your Saturday helping someone move.

Yesterday was the first day our internet access was actually functional; I had to call and get very upset with CenturyTel before anyone paid any attention to my plight. Do all telephone companies suck? This has to be universal, because SBC did nothing but get on my nerves for the fifteen-odd years I had to deal with them. And now, CenturyTel. What a joy. Lost DSL modems and not-quite-all-the-way-connected DSL mapping makes Michelle an unhappy girl.

And a sick one, come to think of it, although that doesn’t have much to do with C-T. There’s been a 24-hour bit of tummy nastiness passing around my extended family. Justin had been the only one hit with it until yesterday, when the sitter called me as I was leaving for work (at 1p, more on that later). “Ryan’s projectile vomitting, come get him.” (I don’t like our sitter, more on that later.)

Oddly, the baby only puked at her house. I arrived to find him naked in a playpen (playyard, whatever). He was happy as a clam, and remained that way for the rest of the day. Don’t know what happened there. Personally, I had a cold coming on Wednesday, so Thursday I planned to stay home from work. Lo and behold, I felt better Thursday morning (after sleeping til 11a) so I went to work. Then yesterday I felt much better, but couldn’t drag my ass in to work for the entire morning because of … I don’t know. Depression again? I think so. It was so bad before we went on vacation that I actually made an appointment with Doug. Lately I’ve had no motivation for anything. I tried to blame it on being pregnant, but I know that’s not it. That’s fine for tiredness, but not the overwhelming need to not get out of bed at all. So everything is suffering again. (I’m trying not to think about it.) Anywho, the baby’s illness was the perfect excuse to wander into work at 3p in jeans to pick up some paperwork.

Now this morning I woke up with a nasty cold. The worst part about headcolds, in my opinion, is the feeling like your head is wrapped in cotton gauze. I just sent S. and Bugga out for some apple juice (my miracle cold cure) and a couple other items, and it took me about 15 minutes to make a list because my mind kept wandering into nothingness.

We are currently in dire need of a sitter. We changed sitters from my old assistant, who has been watching Ryan since August, for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which was a combination of her shrieking three-year-old daughter, an imitating-shrieking two-year-old, and a German Shepard that barks at any provocation. Mix this up with a decided lack of discipline (the daughter runs the house - think Nanny911 on steroids) and I’m surprised Ryan ever slept. Nearly every day I’d pick him up and she’d tell me, “he’s pretty tired.” Well, I bet. Add to this that she’d let him fall asleep on the living room floor and just cover him up (and let the other kids and dog run around next to and over him) and it was time to find a new sitter. Besides that, the drive sucked. She lives in an area of town with no highway or major throughway to use, so my drive would have been thirty minutes to get Justin to school, another twenty to get Ryan to the sitter’s, and another fifteen to work. Screw that.

Anyway, the new sitter is less than a mile from our new house, so it seemed pretty great. Well, except for the fact that she’s a little too business and a little less kid-oriented than I would like. S. met her and liked her, but every communication I had with her made me feel like I was working for her, not that she was providing me with a service. Then I got a deposit check to her ONE DAY later than I said I would, and she went all ballistic and extremely snotty to me on e-mail. I apologized for the delay via e-mail, and received no reply. So I wrote her again, telling her I was a little uncomfortable with her lack of response to my apology, and that I didn’t want to feel uncomfortable with my sitter, and that she made me feel a bit like a criminal in her (snotty) e-mail. At least that elicited a response.

Her snotty attitude on the phone, though, got my back up so bad that my voice was shaking when I explained how things were going to be. I told her that if she couldn’t communicate with me (about the stupid deposit check being one day late) until she got so upset and worked up that she had to take on a major attitude, this was not going to work out, because she’s not watching a piece of my furniture, she’s watching my baby.

S. still insisted he didn’t have a problem with her, so off we went.

In two weeks, I’ve had to have Ryan with me twice due to family issues. The final straw was when she called me on Wednesday mid-afternoon. I pick up the phone at work to hear Ryan shrieking in the background (although not too far from the phone), and she says, “Ryan woke up screaming and he’s bleeding from his ear.” I’m like, WTF??? I said, “He is?” hoping she’d elaborate. “Yeah.” Okay, I said, I’ll have Stephen come get him.

I called S. with my heart pounding and my head over my office trash can in case I threw up from panic. He jumped up from a meeting with his boss and ran to his car. In the interim, the sitter called again. “Okay,” she says, “it looks like he just scratched his ear with his fingernail and woke himself up.” That’s IT? Oh my God I was so mad. I called S. back as he reached his car in the parking lot. I was so peeved that she would call and freak me out before having any idea of what was really going on. S. said that was it, we would find someone else.

My mom thinks the sitter doesn’t have any real experience with babies. She’s got one just younger than Ryan, and that’s probably her first experience with babysitting. I personally think she thought this “babysitting gig” would be a lot easier than it actually is. God knows I couldn’t watch kids all day - I’d be in the nut house in a week. But for heaven’s sake, you can’t panic at every little thing. Even I know that.

So, we gave her two weeks’ notice, and now she’s being a bitch about the Letter of the Law (or contract, so to speak). I’m just happy to see the back of that bad decision. Of course, I’ve no earthly idea what we’ll do with Ryan now. Hopefully something will come through, sooner rather than later.

Fun note: yesterday we had our first fire in the new fireplace. That was fun. I’ve always always always wanted a fireplace. S. grew up with two (one at each end of the house, the brat) so it didn’t really phase him. Me, I was happy as a pig in poo.

Making another fire,
michelle