Alecto's Ophelia

Ah Jeeze...

I had to turn off the new compose editor because based on results I must have a very slow connection. Heh, sucky T3 line.

So here's my dog. Notice he's filling up a monogrammed bed? Notice his name is NOT Homer? Poor Homer. Looks cute, yah? He pees constantly. Almost always where he's supposed to (on the paper) and has only pooped in the house once as compared to the seventy-eight times he's pooped outside since Sunday evening when we brought him home. Might have something to do with taking him out every thirty-seven seconds.

It's been a great week. Or something. On Monday Nanny wrecked the nanny mobile. OK, I exaggerate. On Monday Nanny was in an accident that did just under $6,000 in damage to my $14,000 15 month old Honda Civic that has to live another, let me see, six years. At least. Nanny is fine (she's just mad because the woman who pulled out in front of her wouldn't make eye contact after the fact). Little Girl was not in the car.  All right, so that was Monday.

On Tuesday I found a series of photographs that sent me from hot to right off the deep end. They went like this:

1. Photograph taken Friday night at my house while I was in Vermont. Ten nannies having a party. I can draw the conclusion that the photographer was either my seventeen year old daughter left home alone for the first time ever or nanny number eleven. Before we left Nanny asked if she and four friends could have dinner in my kitchen to celebrate her birthday and could she have a bottle of champagne and the answer was a very polite hell no so I thought I'd better explain no parties and for god's sake no house parties and here are all the reasons why the hell not in my house with my kid present much less in my house even if my kid is not present. Could I be any more clear? Apparently I was clear as mud (do I strike any of you as murky?).
2. Pictures of my kid that while harmless were posted on a public site along side some rather questionable photos and while I don't have a huge issue with my kids on the web, it's um, only if I post them, not you the nanny and certainly not after you've been told by me and Au Pair America that we do not post pictures of the children on the Internet.
3. Photographs taken by my nanny at an over 21 club in Stamford. She's 20.
4. Photographs of what appeared to be my nanny at said club hanging upside down from a, um, pole. By her feet. Mostly dressed.

I wanted to drive my nasty-assed rental car (that I have so that she can drive my car to get the kid to and fro all the places the kid needs to go) home immediately and interrogate her within an inch of her life but Nomans and I had an appointment we'd already put off once and really needed to keep. So we fretted the hours away until we both arrived home at about 7:45 and confronted the poor girl with the photographs.

It went badly. Lets see, how'd it go...

• I didn't know ten was a party
• I didn't invite them all they just showed up, I couldn't stop them
• Everyone goes to Hula Hanks, we just walk right in
• I never drink and drive your car, Nora drives
• Cletus had no idea we were downstairs, we were really quiet

Nomans did a pretty good job finishing her off on Tuesday evening. I refused to even look at her until Wednesday morning at which point I assured her that she was (and is) a wonderful nanny but that she absolutely can not behave this way and live in my house and that flagrant disregard for local laws and custom (especially felonies) shows extreme idiocy and sets an absolutely unacceptable example for my seventeen year old. OK, I used slightly stronger words.

On Wednesday evening we all went to dinner as planned to celebrate Nanny's birthday and our anniversary (because it was actually last night). When we got home she took my car and went out. We stood stunned at the audacity at the top of the stairs.

This evening, after taking over Little Girl's care because Nanny apparently can't get her showered and in jammies and to the table on time, we had the car conversation. The Honda will not be fixed for about a month. That's how long it's going to take to get the parts and settle with the insurance company and fix the mess. My car is a train car. It is my car. It is not the nanny mobile. She has it while I have the rental car. She has it for Little Girl and Cletus and class and required nanny events but other than that she's on her own.

She's downstairs sulking in a state of disbelief. (actually last I checked she got somebody to pick her up so she can finish her sulking at Starbucks with the rest of them)

She's a really great nanny as far as my experience with nannies goes (like I nearly killed the one from last year?). I wonder if she's going to make it? How in holy hell do other people do this?

My dog though, how freaking cute is he?

Just pickles I suppose

Well, you know I really wish I'd taken the time to use the camera at least once this weekend. On the other hand this will cause no download problems for my dial up peeps! I mentioned at the end of last week that my head was spinning from the nanny revolution and I think it still is, or will continue to, until we're settled in with just the one. In the mean time we've got territorial battles, language issues and food issues I was definitely NOT prepared for (you eat only lettuce? really. OK. Am I responsible for your getting scurvy if it comes to that? Probably not but you still need to set a reasonable example for my children.)

Big segue bump here. A very wise man wrote a blog entry a few days ago (OK, maybe only yesterday) remarking that a ton of people started gardens and then had fits when only half the garden worked out and he mentions in his blog that 50% seems pretty good... 20 watt light bulb flickers on over her head momentarily... but does not go out.  He might just have something here.

This is what I wish I could show you:

1. There are no less than forty tomatoes growing on my 20 very scrawny plants. They might not be strong enough to stay tied to stakes and hold up the weight of the fruit but they sure are producing.
2. I made a mess of pickles. My first ever. That fermentation disaster from last year does not count because even the dog would not eat them and also because I can blame that on Nomans (hands down). I only made five jars because apparently that was the end of my seals. Off to acquire more. They are, however, quite beautiful and made from my pickles and my dill. I can't discuss the garlic or the vinegar.
3. From the local farmers market I purchased a mess of tomatoes and made a marinara thick enough to stand up a spoon which was used on pizza which used up the remainder of my harvested veggies for the day.
4. I also made a bolognese and a gazpacho but have yet to convince new nanny that gazpacho is liquid salad and should be at least tasted before turning up one's nose and demanding lettuce (boy is she going to love it when I explain that the butter crunch I will deliver up to her this evening grows wild in my swamp because that's where I let it bolt and bolt and bolt again).
5. And there were two batches of bread, the cheese and the no knead wheat. I am wondering if new nanny will eat them. Old nanny will not.

The chickens are hilarious. We have one small poult egg that Nomans wants to frame on the wall like first dollar bill. He suggested we put it up in formaldehyde like St. Thomas's finger in Rome (really, we saw a finger in a jar of fluid, I am NOT making this up). I suggested he eat it but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get it out of his clutches long enough to crack and cook it.

We are learning that while some chickens roost at home (like the coop, ladies, come on, please) other chickens run amok. One of these prefers roosting in the bushes in the front yard. I'm tempted to leave her there except she'll attract more raccoons. Old Nanny chased her back to the pen yesterday. I'm not sure New nanny will even acknowledge her presence (although I'm not so sure that's accurate because I believe her family kept chickens in the back yard until fairly recently, she just won't eat them or their eggs).

Overall it was a very productive weekend. I question my sanity and my choices periodically but I suppose we all go there periodically.

Now if I could just get my heart rate under 120 and get a decent night's sleep I'm sure everything would be just peachy.

Revolving Nannies

The revolving of the nannies began yesterday. There is a bit of an overlap this year as Au Pair America makes an attempt to correct timing issues with the Educare girls from last year. Educare Au Pairs work no more than 30 hours per week and are required to attend 12 credit hours in the year they are here. Last year the Educare girls got here too late to register at most universities and so suffered at the back end of the year or scrambled to sign up for courses not meaningful to their path of study although as an aside I don't consider any education wasted on the university level even if it's only learning how to stay awake in unfortunate circumstances. I am rambling today.

I am working from home and waiting for the Oracle support tech (either of them) to tell me where to locate this one piece of software that may or may not resolve the problems I've been trying to resolve since last Friday and my head hurts just thinking about it. In about 24 minutes I am going to give up for a few hours and drive the nannies and Cletus around town(s) for a bit and try to get the new one at least somewhat acclimated which brings me back to the dueling nannies at hand.

It took this years nanny about five seconds to recognize that she is, in her words, the exact opposite of last years nanny and this was before even bringing her home. Last years nanny is self described as Emo Nanny, lots of piercings a couple of really interesting tattoos and a strong bent toward the alternative with regard to dress, belief systems and taste in music (god help me). This years nanny is something else entirely and is currently down the hall ironing what appears to be every last bit of clothing she packed (god help me). Both are at polar extremes and I am somewhere in the middle whipping my head back and forth trying to keep up in either direction.

Emo Nanny is here until the 17th or 19th or something like that so we've got a bit of an overlap. New Nanny has yet to be named because I'd call her Fluffy Nanny or something not quite right and then we'd all have the wrong impression from the start.

I will do my best to remain calm and unflustered. I will go play with the chickens.

Sweet Sunday

It's been awhile since we had Sunday around here. Wait, Sunday always happens, right? Maybe I should call up Tom Robbins and ask his opinion about time (I'm working my way through all of his books again; it's been long enough and it's time).

So given tradition, especially if you're new here, I should explain what you see in the picture. Or you can leave it all up to imagination except in my case, I might be more fun.

First there's the back brace. Isn't it cute? My sixteen year old daughter says I look 'smexy' in it. Smexy? Well all righty then. Smexy it is. I have the brace on because of what I and that dog were doing with that mammoth pile of dirt yesterday. OK, NoMans helped too (a lot) but he doesn't seem to be suffering. The dog will tell you he's suffering if he knows what's good for him (loyalty in a dog is everything). Anyway, I'm wearing the brace over a camisole that I wore under a rather bulky sweater when I went to be fitted at Ye Olde Surgical Supply Store and Apothecary that opened up just for me because my pharmacist knows that pharmacist and I looked darn well pathetic when I walked into my pharmacy this morning under the delusion that they might have a brace to fit me (not being a surgical supply store or anything of the kind). The brace is helping me. A lot. Notice the smile.

Also, see the dried roses above the sink? The first batch were from my husband. He bought them at the supermarket on the way to pick me up from the hospital on Valentine's day. There were actually two bunches which is why there are two colors in that group. Next are some pink roses. My mother sent those. She never sends flowers, it's just not her style. But she loves me and it was the only thing she could think to do in the moment. And you know what? Because of all that, they were perfect. The next three bunches I bought myself from Whole Foods Market on the way back from group one week at a time. I hung them when they got old because I loved the colors in the window. And to remind myself that I matter. That last batch is half a string of smoked garlic. It was imported from somewhere and I bought it without thinking. I am ashamed but keep it there as a reminder that fuel don't come cheap. Sometimes I use it but I want it to last. Mostly I use the garlic that comes out of New York State. Pretty soon I'll have my own.

Now back to what I'm doing. I made two batches of Sunday sauce today. The first is with meat and the second without. The first is in the process of becoming Lasagna which is Tuesday's dinner and the second will cover some frozen meatballs I made months ago that will be for Thursday. The fish is farm raised Tilapia and I'm not sure (still working my way though The Omnivore's Dilemma) exactly how I feel about that. It's going to marinate in some olive oil, the juice of two lemons, pepper, cilantro purloined from some of my healthier seedlings and a good amount of garlic. Trust me, it can handle the garlic. It can also handle cheese which just boggles my mind. We will also be having a chicken from which I will make the stock which will feed the next batch of Sunday sauce and so on and so on. I'm using canned tomatoes now too. I gave up. Better to buy the organic canned then the organic hothouse. I don't know why I think that but there you go.

I laid out the plans for my garden today. I am so excited I could just about throw my back out again thinking about it. I have never given myself permission to use this much of the lawn. Back yard? What back yard? Never mind the deer, I'm putting up those rather unattractive U-posts and hooking up some seven foot (he - the hot guy at the lumber yard - SWEARS to the seven feet - and I did have to ask him - 'does that work if you have a gun or if you do not have a gun because I live in Weston and if I shoot the critters I'm going to have some 'splaining to do') anti critter mesh (replaced chicken wire apparently and will also support my cukes, peas and morning glory). Hows that for some parentheticals?

Which leads me to the next nanny. Holy cow am I ever excited! She looks like Barbie (I will probably forgive her) but her biggest concerns were about the food (mom bakes all the bread and they don't buy processed anything and she's a bit concerned about peak oil) and being a member of the family, i.e., cooking, chores, fitting in and all that. I about creamed my jeans and you'll all pardon my momentary lapse. Especially if you've followed the last year.

God is Good. Amen. May we all move on now.

Happy Sunday all - back brace aside, I'm having a happy day.

Love, Alecto

Bees and Duct Tape

Bees: I need twelve cubic yards of screened topsoil. OK, need is a stretch but the bottom line is the development in which we are ensconced is wetlands. This is oh so cool except in order to force the environment to our needs We (yes, the royal and collective We) dumped in a mess of freaking rocks, added something called 'Clean fill' (please, do not ask me to explain this in polite company) and then built a bunch o'houses on top. Thankfully they are small ranches without basements. But still.

So where was I? Twelve cubic yards of screened topsoil (screened because I don't need more rocks, thank you very much). And yes I know how much or big that is. I already got the lecture from the nice man on the phone who assumed I might be one of those ladies who garden with the help one of those nice men with the trucks and rakes. No such luck, it is I, the crazy tomato farmer home to roost in the rocks. It's true. I also don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do when the world ends and my topsoil is all used up but really, one thing at a time folks.

So I planted, on the day I returned from the hospital even though that was a might bit early for these parts, many tomato seeds, hot peppers, sweet peppers, chives, dill, oregano, lavender, coriander, broccoli, sunflower and basil. The giant sunflower seeds were free with my order and they are for teasing the deer. I don't mean for the deer to be able to reach over the new and improved gianormous fence I intend to erect with the help of my husband and daughters (as opposed to the nice man in the truck with the rake). On the day that I planted these seeds, having just escaped the booby hatch, my sixteen year old daughter loftily glanced in my general direction and said: "... and whom, Mommy, is going to plant all these things?" I replied, "me, ya brat, who else?"

On Sunday we watched the missing bee episode of Sixty minutes after which my daughter looked me dead in the eyes and said, "When, Mommy, will that topsoil be arriving?  I'll help.  And do we need bees? They can live with my chicklihoods." With kids, at least mine anyway, sometimes you just have to wait until the lightbulb goes on.

Duct Tape:  This is a common sight in the Northeast, duct tape holding the mailbox together. In our case it is only holding the post together but in many cases it holds the mailbox to the post or the box itself together. Our post has been damaged for years but broken in two this year. I am either too cheap or too ornery (the plow will only run it over again and I won't give him the satisfaction of plowing over a brand new post) to buy a new post.

That is my silly house back there. It is a house I swore I would never live in but here I am and you know what? I'm OK with it.  And I love my pile of rocks too.

Here is Little Girl. This is completely gratuitous. I don't have a point other than to ask you, is this child not completely adorable? She even smells good when we make her bathe!

(We do not have street lights. This is in my driveway and is some bizarre antique thing left by the previous owner. It does work, it is very old and it was once run over by Nanny. Backwards. They both lived to tell about it.)

Snow Falls

It snowed today. Not the six to ten inches we were expecting but snow in any event. Also, it iced. I hate it when it ices. Ice is tough. Every school in this state was shut down at five AM. I know this because I got the text message on my cell phone that happened to be on my night table which it never is but it was last night. Yes, they send text messages now. I got the first one at 5 AM. That would have been the first wave sent out for high school students. I got the second one at 5:47 AM, precisely seven minutes after I managed to fall back asleep, sent out in the forth wave for the elementary school.

So all the schools are shut down at 5 AM and I get up and go to work anyway because it wasn't snowing. Or icing. Or anything. I might have worked from home except I needed to see a co-worker who was the reason I had the cell phone on my night table in the first place. She called me just after 11 PM last night and after a couple of failed attempts (I live in a no cell zone) I managed to retrieve enough of her voice mail to know I needed to check my email. I just didn't know which email. Turns out it was the third account, my work address.

The email came from my friend Jeffrey, or rather his wife, sent from his email address apparently to a very specific list that included me, NoMans and my co-worker. I'm sure there were others, I'm just not exactly sure who. My friend Jeffrey is not yet 52 years old. He was diagnosed with Hepatitis C a few years ago and went through some fairly rigorous therapy that put him into remission for a bit. Damaged, but in remission. About seven weeks ago Jeffrey had to go back to the hospital. My theory is he knew for a long time, I think many of us knew, that he was out of remission and very, very sick again so that by the time he went to the hospital it was pretty much too late.

Do you have any idea how sick you have to be to NOT qualify for a liver transplant? VERY, very sick, apparently. I googled the hell out of it. Also, I found out that the way you die of these complications when you can't have a liver transplant is nothing short of God Freaking Awful. I have a pretty stiff spine but the stuff I read reduced me to blithering idiocy at the thought of someone I love suffering that way.

The prognosis was six to twelve months. He elected to have treatment anyway. Now he's down to days, not weeks, not months, days. I wonder if he read the same things I read and made a choice? Maybe a really, really hard choice.

So I read this email from his wife and had a little bit of a meltdown with NoMans in the bedroom because this guy has been my best friend for the last ten years, gave me away at two weddings (we're betting this last one sticks too), and understood me better than just about anyone, I think. God knows he loves me and that's something.

And at about 1 AM I think I finally fell asleep only to wake up again at 5 and more or less stay that way. I was tired when I went to work today. Tired and simply not fit for human consumption. My boss worked this out pretty quick and told me to stop responding to Shelob's emails immediately. As in Cease and Desist or I will unplug you from the LAN. OK, fine. I stopped.

I kept looking over my shoulder waiting for the snow, or anything to start and it just wasn't. Then at about 11:30 the skies just opened up and it looked like some over-zealous Christian god had emptied the world's feather pillows out all at once. I suppose it was beautiful. It certainly looked that way.

Also at 11:30 my boss pinged me. He told me to turn around and that also my co-worker had finally arrived and that I should come upstairs and see her and then I should go straight home. I told him. I tell him a lot. He knows Jeffrey too. Jeffrey gave me to him. How bizarre does that sound? It's the truth though, Jeffrey did hook us up.

So I went upstairs to see my friend and we didn't have much to say because neither of us like to cry and so I went home. And we still don't know what to do, she and I. We don't have any idea at all.

It took two hours to get home. We don't plow the state roads around here much until the snow and ice are nearly done. We do sand but that doesn't help much in four inches of slush and ice. I did OK until I made an error in judgment and chose a very big and windy hill. I was behind a van and the van was struggling and so I was struggling and I was pushing my engine and I was shaking and I just hate that but I made it up that hill at about 4,000 rpms most of the way. I had one more hill to do like that and then I got home and the driveway was empty.

I burst through the door calling for my kids and the nanny and there was no one. The front door was open and the television was on but the nanny mobile was gone in this horrible storm and I just could not breathe. So I called Cletus and her phone went to voice mail. And then I called Nanny and Nanny answered and I said, "Where are you?!" and she said, "At Borders, didn't Cletus tell you?" and I said, "No! No, she didn't tell me but I told her I was coming home and it's really horrible out there and you need to come home right now." She said, "OK" and then I hung up and tried not to puke on my feet because if they didn't make it back I didn't know what the hell good I was going to do in my little non-four wheel drive vehicle.

They did OK, it took 45 minutes to go about seven miles but they got back in one piece. Nanny knows better now and Cletus most assuredly does. And during those 45 minutes I migrated databases and pretended I could not hear my heartbeat in my head.

Now I breathe. I am so very tired this evening. Tomorrow will be another day. Jeffrey will still be where he is, but tomorrow will be another day.

Non negotiables

This is for Amy. Well, and for RW as well. I've been thinking about Amy's top ten or eleven or how every many things in life are non negotiable for Amy and her challenge for us to come up with the same.  And you know what?  I couldn't do it. Every time I came up with something I thought was non negotiable I instantly came up with a scenario where that might not be the case. And then I second guessed myself to the point of nausea and then I ran to my room to avoid eviscerating Nanny last night and it finally hit me.

I have just one. If you're going to say something incendiary, please let it be forwarding. Please let the price that is paid be worth the value in the end. This falls firmly into the camp of 'if you don't have anything nice to say, shut your mouth. Unless you absolutely must, and then do it responsibly.'

There is a reason we don't just say what we feel to people without a filter.  While it might get our point across it may leave trash in it's wake. And then we only got to be right, we haven't served anyone, changed anything or altered the world in any forwarding way at all.  We have simply had an opportunity to be right or vent or just let lose because we felt a certain way in the moment.  Moments pass.

Now, having said that, there's just no way on God's good earth we're going to live lives doing no harm.  It just won't happen.  And there is a lot of power and good in taking a stand for something you believe in; the world wouldn't move one iota forward if we did not.  But there is a solid difference between being positioned versus taking a stand. Positioned is closed and fundamental. Being or taking a stand is an idea with enough of an opening to allow differing degrees of experience to move into alignment with that stand.

A stand for world peace, versus a position of what it looks like, would allow Israel and Palestine to come into alignment. Just an example.

Having said all that, things with Nanny are coming to a head. She's either going to change her way of being or she's going to leave my house. And my conundrum is how to say the words that need to be said in such a way that they are heard and a shift can occur. Because the alternative is a very devastated young lady leaving my household without a single idea how this happened to her and no chance of having it be different in the future.

And all that up there?  It was my opinion. My. Opinion.  I could be wrong.  Hell, by tomorrow night I will probably have changed my mind and seen it all some other way completely. I'm unreliable that way.

Nannyville

Having a nanny has not made my life one bit easier, not even slightly, anywhere, no how no way no where. It has, however, broadened the lives of my daughters significantly which was the primary motivation in the first place. I forget that sometimes.

Here is how it has broadened my daughters' horizons:

Little Girl has discovered the fine art of six year old bossiness. Sometimes I cannot believe what I hear coming from the kitchen or the bedroom or down the hall if I happen to be home while Nanny and Little Girl are following the dotted line we have laid out for them. The dotted lines are there because without them absolutely nothing gets done. And I mean nothing. So much for providing goals and hoping Nanny and Little Girl will grow in working out how to achieve them.

Cletus Marie has discovered the fine art of over-scheduling, over-extending and double-booking herself. A girl after my own heart, we consider this year the year of learning time management. Or being introduced to the concept of time management.  Oh forget it.

And me. Oh my.  I don't get to leave my office at 5 PM two to three days a week anymore. Now I work until 6 every night.  While this makes my entire batch of business partners happy as little piggies in poo, I am bloody well exhausted. Most of the time we eat by 8.  Most of the time.

I want mommy. Happy Friday!