Follow me on Twitter??? WTF?

To begin with, I am the first person who trashed Twitter because I saw the steady decline of our youth becoming unable to form sentences into meaningful paragraphs.  And for this I blamed Twitter.  Guess what?  I went shopping today for a pair of new running pants (running? Yes, that story to follow) (and upon re-reading this I realized how seriously messed up it is to start talking about Twitter then go directly to shopping for running pants.  Who can't string a bunch of sentences together now!)  Back to the shopping: because I am getting tired of doing laundry every second day since I only really have two pair of decent pants to run in.  After trying on 7 pairs of running pants all the while trying to NOT look in the mirror I sat down and almost cried.  Stupid winter fat.  Then it occurred to me.  Maybe one of my friends would want to know this information on a timely basis so we can drown our sorrows in wine and cake.  (Or in my case wine and/or beer, cake and/or sandwiches.  LOVE sandwiches!)  Anyway, I thought it would be a super fun challenge for this old, fat gal to try and link up the little blue bird to my blog.  I did it!  Bite me all you young, grammatically challenged skinny people.  

An Adventure in Babysitting - AKA: Why I am no longer a qualified daycare provider.

This past Christmas break I had the privilege to help my favourite niece with a little babysitting.  Her daycare decided to shut down for a few days over Christmas and she needed a bit of help with the watching of her beautiful four year old wipper snapper.  I signed on for two days.  Two FULL days.  I am not talking about four hour stints here.  Two, entire full work days (plus travel time=long, long days).  I figured how hard could it be?  She's a cute little girl.  Don't they just colour all day and watch Frozen?  I immediately told the Old Boy and the Youngest Money Sucker they had to help.  Old Boy was in as long as he could convince her to sit and watch golf/hockey/any other sport with him and the Youngest Money Sucker pretty much said "Hell no! I will be in my room."  Nice.  The first day came and I quickly realized that I was so unqualified to watch girl type people.  Within the first 45 minutes I was begging the other family members to take a one hour "answer the four year olds questions" shift.  My reasoning was that if we each took a shift answering the endless stream of ridiculous questions, then the others could take a break (therefore preventing all of us from going insane at the same time).  Never in my life have I met a person who talked that much and asked that many questions!  Boys may be dirty and a little dumb but Holy Hannah they are much quieter!  (In hindsight maybe they are a little dumber because they don't ask a million and a half questions?  Huh.  I'm however sticking with puberty completely destroying their grey matter.  That's my theory.)

After the first full day of child minding I realized that colouring and movie watching was not this little person's cup of tea.  For heavens sake she never stopped moving OR talking for more than one entire full minute.  I was mentally exhausted.  Not only did she exude endless amounts of energy, she also was an extremely smooth manipulator (thank goodness for texting or I would have clearly let her eat all the candy and chocolate that she told me her mom let her eat "all the time" within the first two minutes of arriving!)  I still had another full day.  Oh holy crap.

Day two arrives and I think I am much more prepared.  My helpers however have flown the coop and found important "errands" they needed to run.  Jerks.  I think I am super creative and take her to the library which, as it turns out, emits another litany of questions I did not see coming.  After the library we do lunch then beautiful, wonderful nap time.  My niece lets me in on a little napping secret so I tell her that she just needs to take a teeny, tiny nap but I won't start the "nap timer" until she is asleep (my niece is a genius) to which I leave the room only to listen to her talk to herself for over an hour.  Non-stop jabbering. To. Herself.  How can one small  person have that much to say? 

Fun side of this story is that during her nap jabber time I texted the oldest money sucker (who was on the same floor as Chatty Cathy) and asked him if he still thought his little brother was all that bad.  I got a resounding "Oh Hell No".  That was the first win of the day.  The second win was me reminding the oldest how vitally important BIRTH CONTROL is.  He concurred.  Lessons learned for everyone!!!!!

The Travesty and various other words to describe the current situation.

Before I start blithering on and on about the injustices of my world an update on the youngest money suckers health:

Kid is fine.  Grumpy and moving a lot slower than is his norm but the first surgery went well and the young lad is bouncing back rather quickly.  We did have some interesting moments during our hospital stay (I say "our" because I stayed there the entire time.  It was the most brutal three days I can clearly recall.)  The most heart wrenching was being on a floor filled with babies and children who have had surgery.  It is the saddest thing I can imagine and the nurses who work there are absolute saints.  Every single nurse we came across during our time there was amazing.  It is however, the absolute worst place to heal.  Rest and sleep are non-existent.  By day three I told the kid to get dressed and look normal because if we had to spend one more night in that place I was going to kill someone (that and the "parent bathroom" looked like it had NEVER been cleaned and the entire time we were there, there was a urine sample in the parent shower which confused the heck out of me because a. why was a parent of a child in Childrens' Hospital giving a urine sample? and b. who is responsible for cleaning that damn bathroom?  I would bet money if I went back there today, over two weeks later, that bottle of pee would still be there!  Gross.)  One small surgery left for the lad in a few weeks and then hopefully he (and his defective kidney) will be good to go on to many great adventures!  (On a more hilarious note the boy has been uncomfortably peeing blood since the surgery, which is entirely normal until the stent gets removed from his kidney.  This has however, provided me with an opportunity to tell him that is what could happen to him and his wizzer if he doesn't protect himself during "relations".  So much fun embarrassing your kids.  It's clearly why we have them.  Right?)

Back to me - Now that the boy has recovered enough to go back to school, I am going to make myself an appointment with the Crazy Doctor because clearly, honestly this is the path I am travelling.  Take today for example: I did my usual on line job search, sent out a few resumes, made banana bread, cleaned the kitchen, took out the recycling bins, emptied the dishwasher, cleaned the litter box and then, while waiting for the banana bread to come out of the oven, found myself sewing up a hole in the kids shirt.  It was at this point where I looked up and said out loud "What the fuck!".  When did I become Susy Homemaker?  I don't sew!  That was the last straw.  I almost grabbed a beer out of the fridge just to counteract the Pink Work I had just done.  Sewing.  Come on, really?  I need help.  Or a job.  Whichever comes first.