DARLA!

You know that part in Finding Nemo when Nemo's in the fish tank and he finds out that he's going to be Darla's birthday present, and all the fish are in a panic and then you hear the screechy music and the door bangs open and the fish gasp, "DARLA!!!!"??

I had a moment like that today.

Here's the background info: I'm a registered babysitter on sittercity.com, which is an amazing site that I've gotten many awesome jobs from. A few weeks ago, a mother of four called and asked if I could babysit a few hours for her youngest son, who's 2 and a half. He would be napping most of the time, and then she'd be back before her other three get home from school. It sounded great to me, so I said yes. It started out fine, although a little odd: the 4 and a half year old girl came running up to me as soon as I got out of the car, jumped into my arms and wrapped her legs around my waist (my thought: "well hello there; it's nice to meet you too!"). It quickly went downhill from there. This house had a tv in every room, including the 2.5 year old's room. Apparently the tv's are always left on, especially during naptime. There was not a single book in the house. Not a SINGLE book! After not seeing any in the two-year-old's room, I went in search of them in the other kids' rooms and in the living room. I've never been to a house with absolutely no books in it. I was shocked. The youngest two were still in diapers (a four year old girl still in diapers?! weird...), and both were really hard to understand when they spoke, although the boy didn't have very many words (read: maybe two). Then the 6 year old and the 12 year old came home from school, and all of a sudden I found myself entertaining four kids, two of whom were busy playing their handheld Nintendos while watching some violent cartoon show, while the other two were busy spinning in circles on the floor while screaming and kicking each other in the head. Mom came home after four and a half hours of this, paid me exactly 45 dollars, and said she'll call me again soon. I waved goodbye and thought to myself, "oh please don't."

Enter the Darla moment: today, she called. She wants me to babysit her youngest again on Friday from noon to three, which happens to be my only day not babysitting Max this week. She left a message, so I'll have to call her back tomorrow.

The question is: am I desperate enough for that thirty dollars to brave the circus act again?

New Blog!

It dawned on me recently that it's the end of October already. I'm still having a hard time convincing myself that summer is over, especially since the weather here has been beautiful lately. When I graduated in May, I was sure I'd have a job by the end of September, but alas, it seems I have no such luck. Apparently the economy is crap and jobs are scarce. Who knew.

Anyway, since I seem to find myself with a little extra time on my hands, I thought I'd chronicle it for anyone bored enough to read about it. Just as a little background info, I'm currently living at the Jersey Shore (no, it's nothing like the TV show. This is the classy part of New Jersey), at my aunt's beach house which is a block and a half from the beach. I live here alone with my orange cat, creatively named Marmalade, who generally loves this house but isn't quite sure what to do about the slowly dropping temperatures. He's a Floridian. I'm pretty sure he's going to be very confused when it starts snowing in a month or two. I just started babysitting a 20 month old boy named Max, who's probably one of the cutest kids ever. He's just learning how to talk and he's quite smart. Today I told him his hamburger comes from a cow. His eyes got huge for a second as he digested that information, and then he pointed at the meat on his tray and said, "cow. moo." I'm pretty sure he'll never call it hamburger again.

My days are filled with Marmalade, Max, and.....cooking, one of my favorite new hobbies. I'll be posting pictures of yummy things I make, with the recipes if I can remember what I threw in the pot and in what quantities. Sometimes I'm good about that, and sometimes I just start getting creative. The outcomes are quite hit or miss, but the hits generally outnumber the misses so I'm considering myself a success in the kitchen.

So strap yourself into your high chair and join me on this new adventure in unemployment!