I realized that all these years, I had been dreading a giant toad, lurking offshore, waiting to suck me under and drag me out to sea.
Okay, so I admit it, I try to catch a few minutes of the Today show with regularity. It isn’t that the reporting is necessarily intelligent nor the stories all that interesting. I honestly think it is simply the comfort of familiarity first thing in the morning. It also provides me with conversation nuggets for the rest of the day when I don’t feel like making small talk about my children (which is always).
Yesterday, this seemed to be the talk of the day:
For any readers over the age of fifty or those yet without children, here’s some free information (that should shock and appall you): the going rate for a babysitter (here in Mid-Sized-Suburban-Town, USA) is ten dollars an hour. This is for one or two children. I hear that my friends with more than three children pay more.
As one of the oldest girls in the neighborhood where I grew up with a criminal background that boasted of above average responsibility, I think I started babysitting when I was about eleven years old. Most of the neighborhood kids were the ages of my younger sisters, and to my best memory, I never changed a diaper in my life before Eliott was born.
I wake up every morning to NPR, twice. I get a ten minute teaser when John wakes up at 6:30. Then, many mornings from 7:30 to 8:30, I catch up as I lie in bed sort of defying the day (or Carter) to come and get me.
It is amazing the statistical nuggets of totally useless information available from 6:30 to 8:30 on NPR. Most often, I’m finding, statistics related to the general health of America consistently put me and my family in a much higher percentile than I could have ever hoped for on something like my SAT’s or graduation rank.
I knew I’d be a winner one day. And let me say, it is exactly as glorious as I always hoped it would be.
After weeks of terrible night time sleep and the most fabulous naps of my life on our blue Lazy Boy, at eleven o’clock last night I broke the news to John that I would be sleeping on the couch.
The result? We’re considering investing in twin beds. (Grandma and Grandpa Paulus, I totally get it now.)
I have just had the most productive day in fourteen weeks. And so, I’m celebrating by eating a cinnamon roll and brogging about it. (I just made that up. Brogging. You know, bragging on my blog.)
The UnderToad 