Start with Surreal Babysitting Adventures, Part I and Part II, if you want the context.
One day, I was upstairs in my home office, working away. The Babysitter Who Shall Not Be Named (BWSNBN) was downstairs with the kids, doing a pretty good job of keeping them away from me and keeping the noise level down to a dull roar. That's all I ask, really. I'm no hard-ass.
BWSNBN--let's call her BW for typing and reading ease--comes upstairs with an urgent question. "Um, E. Peevie, do you have any air freshener?"
Well, as a matter of fact, I did not have air freshener. But I suspected that there had been a Number Two situation that was filling the downstairs atmosphere with noxious fumes.
"Light a match, BW," I suggested. "That always takes care of the problem for me."
Baaaaaaaaaaaaad idea.
About 20 minutes later I came downstairs, and I smelled a bit of a smoky smell. "BW," I asked, "Are you cooking something?"
"Nope," she replied.
"Did you burn something earlier? I smell smoke," I insisted. I headed toward the kitchen, but she still denied cooking anything. Approaching the kitchen, I could still smell smoke--but from a different direction. I turned and looked down the hallway, and saw ribbons of smoke curling out of the bathroom.
I ran down the hall and stopped at the bathroom door. "HOLY SHIT!" I hollered, even though three children and one impressionable babysitter were within earshot. "Shit! Fire!" A bonfire was burning on top of the toilet tank, with flames blistering the paint three feet up the wall and immolating the wicker basket of hairbrushes and TP.
My shocking language and the promise of dramatic and fiery excitement immediately brought all the kids running toward the bathroom--except for the smart one, A. Peevie, who went screaming for the front door, in the opposite direction. That boy might struggle with his math facts, but math facts won't drag you out of a burning house.
Meanwhile, I ran for the kitchen and filled up a pitcher with water. (It never even occurred to me to grab the fire extinguisher in easy reach on the counter.) I ran back to the bathroom and shooed M. Peevie and the sitter away from the door. C. Peevie had boldly turned on the tap and was futilely splashing water from the sink onto the flames, but I shooed him away as well.
When I dumped the entire pitcher of water on the conflagration, black smoke billowed up to the ceiling and the basket blaze slightly abated. Flames still crawled up the blackening wall from the charred hand towel, so I filled the pitcher in the tub and splashed the fire again. I grabbed the end of the still-burning towel and a tiny corner of the still-burning basket, tossed them into the sink and extinguished the rest of the stubborn flames.
Once I was confident that the danger from the fire was over, I remembered that A. Peevie was probably curled up in a fetal position on the front lawn, so I went to find him. I passed the BWSNBN, sobbing in the living room, and headed out the front door. I found A. Peevie waiting for me safely on the sidewalk, trembling like an addict two days into rehab. He didn't stop shaking for two hours, poor baby.
Inside, I put my arms around the sitter, who was also shaking and still sobbing. "It's OK, BW," I said, "Everything's OK now."
"I set your HOUSE on FIRE!" she sobbed. "On FIRE!"
"I know, sweetheart," I said. It's amazing how easily I could forgive setting my house on fire, but to this day cannot let go of too-crisp brownies and wet dishes in the cabinet. There is something wrong with me. "But it's OK now. The fire's out and everybody's safe. No harm done."
"I'm so sorry," BW said shakily, "I'm so sorry. I will never light another candle ever again in my life."
Aahhh. That's what happened. She lit a candle and set it on the back of the john, and the flame caught the hand towel.
"It's OK, BW," I repeated. "I've almost burned my own house down with candles many a time." I pointed to the block glass window alcove, with two circular singe-marks from un-watched candles. "See! We had only been in the house about two weeks when I almost burned it down!"
Eventually, everyone settled down and stopped shaking and blubbering. We cleaned up the mess in the bathroom, threw out the burned towel and the singed basket of melted stuff, and everything went back to "normal." Which, as we all know, is relative.
"I don't want you to pay me for today!" BW hilariously insisted; and I told her we were going to forget the whole thing, and didn't need to tell anyone about it. She told her parents anyway, and they offered to paint my bathroom.
But I declined. The wall doesn't look that bad, and if you tilt your head and squint a little, the partially-wiped-off-black-gunk kind of takes the shape of a menacing face--a little artistic reminder to all of us to be careful with candles.
And to be grateful for every single day without a house fire.
Showing posts with label babysitting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label babysitting. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Surreal Babysitting Adventures, Part II
In case you missed it, here's the first installment of Surreal Babysitting Adventures.
If I knew that K-Nut would be in charge of dinner, I'd do my best to make sure that she had a ready-made, simple-to-prepare dinner solution. But without fail, my plans failed.
One time, I got out all the fixings for sloppy joes: ground beef, buns, a canned sloppy joe sauce, and frozen corn. I even got out the right pan to use to cook the ground beef. I thought it was fool-proof. This was a woman who had somehow raised one child to adulthood, and a bunch more were well on their way to surviving childhood with no obvious long-term effects from food poisoning. They seemed relatively normal and healthy--so I figured she'd be capable of making and serving one batch of sloppy joe to my kids without anyone ending up in the ER.
Well, as Mr. Peevie and I were getting ready to leave, K-Nut started making dinner. She flipped the ground beef into the pan and started browning it. Moments later, however, I was grossed out when she opened the can of sloppy joe sauce, dumped it right on the raw beef and started stirring it around.
Who makes sloppy joes this way? Who in this hemisphere does not know (or can't read the instructions on the side of the can telling you) that you must brown the ground beef first, pour off the fat, and then dump the sloppy joe mix in? Not only were they in danger of eating raw meat--because how would you actually know when the meat was browned when it was already coated with tomato sauce--but they'd also be eating an extra 1500 calories in straight lard.
I was flummoxed.
I hurried to the kitchen, one shoe on and one in my hand. "K-Nut," I said, "I've never seen anyone make sloppy joe this way."
"Oh, I've never made it before," she said. "I just figured that you put the sauce in with the meat and then cook it."
"Generally, it's a good idea to brown the meat first," I said gently--on the outside; but on the inside, I was thinking a) have you never cooked with ground beef before? No matter what you're making--shepherd's pie, spaghetti sauce, chili mac--you brown, drain, and then mix; and b) did it occur to you to read the instructions? I'm just sayin. My insides are frequently bitchier than my outsides.
"It's going to be harder to tell if the meat is done with the sauce already mixed in," I added, "So just make sure you cook it really, really thoroughly."
"How have your kids survived for so long if this is how you cook for them?" I desperately wanted to ask, but refrained.
We shook our heads at many other clueless choices that K-Nut made as a babysitter as well. She'd leave the window shades up when she put the kids to bed--even when it was still light outside. She'd put them to bed fully clothed, without having them change into PJs. We learned to leave specific instructions about what they could and could not eat, because otherwise, they'd scam her into letting them have an entire carton of ice cream or a whole bag of cookies.
"Oh," they tell her, all innocent-like, "my mom lets us have 10 cookies for dessert all the time." And she'd believe them.
One time, we came home well past bedtime, and found A. Peevie awake and playing on the floor of his bedroom. "Um, K-Nut," I said, "How come A. Peevie is still up?"
"Oh, he said he wanted to sleep on the floor, so I told him he could," she said. "I didn't think you'd mind."
Well, what I did mind was that my child was still awake two hours after his bedtime because my space cadet babysitter made some creative bedtime decisions.
By now you're thinking, why in the name of all things holy did we continue to use this babysitter? Well, we'd call her to see if one of her daughters could sit, and often they could, but when they couldn't, K-Nut would show up in their place.
But also, part of me was wondering: Is it me? Am I just too rigid? Am I the strange one here? Eventually, Mr. Peevie and I decided it was just too stressful to have her over and be wondering the whole time we were out what surreal babysitting stories we'd be telling the next day.
Also, our kids got older, and our need for babysitting diminished dramatically. Unfortunately, this did not happen until AFTER the bathroom caught fire.
Stay tuned for the next episode of Surreal Babysitting Adventures.
If I knew that K-Nut would be in charge of dinner, I'd do my best to make sure that she had a ready-made, simple-to-prepare dinner solution. But without fail, my plans failed.
One time, I got out all the fixings for sloppy joes: ground beef, buns, a canned sloppy joe sauce, and frozen corn. I even got out the right pan to use to cook the ground beef. I thought it was fool-proof. This was a woman who had somehow raised one child to adulthood, and a bunch more were well on their way to surviving childhood with no obvious long-term effects from food poisoning. They seemed relatively normal and healthy--so I figured she'd be capable of making and serving one batch of sloppy joe to my kids without anyone ending up in the ER.
Well, as Mr. Peevie and I were getting ready to leave, K-Nut started making dinner. She flipped the ground beef into the pan and started browning it. Moments later, however, I was grossed out when she opened the can of sloppy joe sauce, dumped it right on the raw beef and started stirring it around.
Who makes sloppy joes this way? Who in this hemisphere does not know (or can't read the instructions on the side of the can telling you) that you must brown the ground beef first, pour off the fat, and then dump the sloppy joe mix in? Not only were they in danger of eating raw meat--because how would you actually know when the meat was browned when it was already coated with tomato sauce--but they'd also be eating an extra 1500 calories in straight lard.
I was flummoxed.
I hurried to the kitchen, one shoe on and one in my hand. "K-Nut," I said, "I've never seen anyone make sloppy joe this way."
"Oh, I've never made it before," she said. "I just figured that you put the sauce in with the meat and then cook it."
"Generally, it's a good idea to brown the meat first," I said gently--on the outside; but on the inside, I was thinking a) have you never cooked with ground beef before? No matter what you're making--shepherd's pie, spaghetti sauce, chili mac--you brown, drain, and then mix; and b) did it occur to you to read the instructions? I'm just sayin. My insides are frequently bitchier than my outsides.
"It's going to be harder to tell if the meat is done with the sauce already mixed in," I added, "So just make sure you cook it really, really thoroughly."
"How have your kids survived for so long if this is how you cook for them?" I desperately wanted to ask, but refrained.
We shook our heads at many other clueless choices that K-Nut made as a babysitter as well. She'd leave the window shades up when she put the kids to bed--even when it was still light outside. She'd put them to bed fully clothed, without having them change into PJs. We learned to leave specific instructions about what they could and could not eat, because otherwise, they'd scam her into letting them have an entire carton of ice cream or a whole bag of cookies.
"Oh," they tell her, all innocent-like, "my mom lets us have 10 cookies for dessert all the time." And she'd believe them.
One time, we came home well past bedtime, and found A. Peevie awake and playing on the floor of his bedroom. "Um, K-Nut," I said, "How come A. Peevie is still up?"
"Oh, he said he wanted to sleep on the floor, so I told him he could," she said. "I didn't think you'd mind."
Well, what I did mind was that my child was still awake two hours after his bedtime because my space cadet babysitter made some creative bedtime decisions.
By now you're thinking, why in the name of all things holy did we continue to use this babysitter? Well, we'd call her to see if one of her daughters could sit, and often they could, but when they couldn't, K-Nut would show up in their place.
But also, part of me was wondering: Is it me? Am I just too rigid? Am I the strange one here? Eventually, Mr. Peevie and I decided it was just too stressful to have her over and be wondering the whole time we were out what surreal babysitting stories we'd be telling the next day.
Also, our kids got older, and our need for babysitting diminished dramatically. Unfortunately, this did not happen until AFTER the bathroom caught fire.
Stay tuned for the next episode of Surreal Babysitting Adventures.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Surreal Babysitting Adventures, Part I
We've been fortunate to have, for the most part, babysitters who love our children, who make wise decisions while caring for them, who rarely lose them and who almost never give them overdoses of OTC drugs.
In fact, one of our sitters, my dear friend Roseanne, has this motto: "No bleeding and no choking on my watch!" So far, the kids have cooperated, even the one taking a blood-thinner. She's also really, really good at turning their tears and whining into giggles and tickle-fights. Every single time she walks into the house, the kids run to her--even the teenager--and give her a big hug.
But we have also had our share--some might say more than our share!--of babysitting stories that you will swear I made up. But I didn't.
One of our babysitters--let's call her K-Nut--was apparently raised by wolves. She's a book-bright woman who did normal everyday things--like make dinner, do laundry, or wash dishes--in such incomprehensible ways that she appeared to be totally unfamiliar with the strange ways of the people in this flat land of Chi-Kah-Goh. (And BTW, I didn't ask her to do those extra things--she just did them. Until I asked her to please stop.)
She'd wash dishes--God knows, there were always plenty in the sink, and she'd head straight there when she walked in the door, but I wasn't offended, because I will never object when someone wants to wash my dishes--wash them, and put them straight from the sink to the cabinet. Dripping wet. I am not even kidding. More than once I pulled a plate from the cabinet, plopped a slice of bread on it to make a sandwich--and did a double-take when I realized that the bread was all-of-a-sudden soaking wet.
She'd wash my kitchen counters--I think she was morally offended by my low housekeeping standards--and leave puddles of water deep enough to stock with game fish. K-Nut must have had an aversion to drying things, because sometimes I'd come home and find my laundry washed, dried, and folded in neat piles on the bed--but the folded clothes wouldn't actually be dry. They'd be more wet than damp, and had to be tossed back into the dryer to finish the job.
See what I mean? Raised by wolves. Or aliens, on a different planet. The planet "What The Hell Is She Thinking?"
K-Nut was raising a mob of children with a complete dearth of cooking know-how and common sense. Knowing this, I'd try to make things easy on her by preparing a crock-pot meal that she'd just have to serve at dinner time. Easy-peasy, right? Not so much.
One time I had crock-potted a delicious pot roast, complete with potatoes, carrots and onions; I turned it on, and left written instructions for when it would be done and what time to serve it. Later than evening when I asked the kids how dinner was, they said, "Great! But the blueberry pancakes were a little burned."
[It was like a surrealism joke: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? Two: One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools. HA! Thank you, thank you, enjoy the veal, we'll be here all week.]
Blueberry pancakes? "What happened to the pot roast," I asked, mystified. It seems that K-Nut had served the pot roast and vegetables, along with blueberry pancakes (burned) and blueberry muffins. On the same plate. The burned-on pancake pan was still soaking in the sink, so I knew that my jokester kids were not scamming me.
See? I told you you'd think I was making it up.
K-Nut was sweet and gentle with my kids, which I always appreciated. They loved it when she came over, because she'd always make brownies with them. Unfortunately, she never got them quite right. They were frequently wafer thin and crispy.
"K-Nut," I said, "This brownie mix calls for a smaller pan. If you use the loaf pan, your brownies will be the right thickness."
"OK," K-Nut agreed, and added redundantly, "I'm not a very good cook."
"K," I teased, "You don't have to be a good cook. You just have to be able to read the instructions on the box."
She laughed, but the joke was on me. The next time she made brownies they were double-thick and raw in the middle.
"K-Nut, what happened to the brownies?" I asked her.
"Well, I used the loaf pan that you told me to use, but the brownies didn't get cooked in the middle," she said.
She had made two boxes of brownie mix, doubling the volume of batter--but she used the same size pan that was recommended for one box. Because that's the pan I told her to use.
More surreal babysitting adventures to come. Stay tuned.
In fact, one of our sitters, my dear friend Roseanne, has this motto: "No bleeding and no choking on my watch!" So far, the kids have cooperated, even the one taking a blood-thinner. She's also really, really good at turning their tears and whining into giggles and tickle-fights. Every single time she walks into the house, the kids run to her--even the teenager--and give her a big hug.
But we have also had our share--some might say more than our share!--of babysitting stories that you will swear I made up. But I didn't.
One of our babysitters--let's call her K-Nut--was apparently raised by wolves. She's a book-bright woman who did normal everyday things--like make dinner, do laundry, or wash dishes--in such incomprehensible ways that she appeared to be totally unfamiliar with the strange ways of the people in this flat land of Chi-Kah-Goh. (And BTW, I didn't ask her to do those extra things--she just did them. Until I asked her to please stop.)
She'd wash dishes--God knows, there were always plenty in the sink, and she'd head straight there when she walked in the door, but I wasn't offended, because I will never object when someone wants to wash my dishes--wash them, and put them straight from the sink to the cabinet. Dripping wet. I am not even kidding. More than once I pulled a plate from the cabinet, plopped a slice of bread on it to make a sandwich--and did a double-take when I realized that the bread was all-of-a-sudden soaking wet.
She'd wash my kitchen counters--I think she was morally offended by my low housekeeping standards--and leave puddles of water deep enough to stock with game fish. K-Nut must have had an aversion to drying things, because sometimes I'd come home and find my laundry washed, dried, and folded in neat piles on the bed--but the folded clothes wouldn't actually be dry. They'd be more wet than damp, and had to be tossed back into the dryer to finish the job.
See what I mean? Raised by wolves. Or aliens, on a different planet. The planet "What The Hell Is She Thinking?"
K-Nut was raising a mob of children with a complete dearth of cooking know-how and common sense. Knowing this, I'd try to make things easy on her by preparing a crock-pot meal that she'd just have to serve at dinner time. Easy-peasy, right? Not so much.
One time I had crock-potted a delicious pot roast, complete with potatoes, carrots and onions; I turned it on, and left written instructions for when it would be done and what time to serve it. Later than evening when I asked the kids how dinner was, they said, "Great! But the blueberry pancakes were a little burned."
[It was like a surrealism joke: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? Two: One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools. HA! Thank you, thank you, enjoy the veal, we'll be here all week.]
Blueberry pancakes? "What happened to the pot roast," I asked, mystified. It seems that K-Nut had served the pot roast and vegetables, along with blueberry pancakes (burned) and blueberry muffins. On the same plate. The burned-on pancake pan was still soaking in the sink, so I knew that my jokester kids were not scamming me.
See? I told you you'd think I was making it up.
K-Nut was sweet and gentle with my kids, which I always appreciated. They loved it when she came over, because she'd always make brownies with them. Unfortunately, she never got them quite right. They were frequently wafer thin and crispy.
"K-Nut," I said, "This brownie mix calls for a smaller pan. If you use the loaf pan, your brownies will be the right thickness."
"OK," K-Nut agreed, and added redundantly, "I'm not a very good cook."
"K," I teased, "You don't have to be a good cook. You just have to be able to read the instructions on the box."
She laughed, but the joke was on me. The next time she made brownies they were double-thick and raw in the middle.
"K-Nut, what happened to the brownies?" I asked her.
"Well, I used the loaf pan that you told me to use, but the brownies didn't get cooked in the middle," she said.
She had made two boxes of brownie mix, doubling the volume of batter--but she used the same size pan that was recommended for one box. Because that's the pan I told her to use.
More surreal babysitting adventures to come. Stay tuned.
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