Sadface.

Today I worked all three jobs, nine a.m. to nine p.m.
This was capped off by my oldest nannybaby telling me that she is trying to lose weight. She's been trying to eat less and measuring out her food but she says the serving sizes are so small. She told me she thinks she's flabby and has fat thighs. Let me just tell you, she doesn't need to lose weight. She's totally normal size, perfect size for her height. Also, she's twelve. As someone who has always struggled with the concept of weight and my own body issues, I know how terrible (and I'm sure all of you do too!) it is to not feel happy with your body. But at twelve years old, it just makes me sad that kids feel like they have to start dieting, especially when they are at a healthy, good, normal weight.

What do you think is the right age to start worrying about this stuff?

Outbreak!

At one of my jobs (there are so many, I can get away with disclosing this and not outing anyone), someone caught the MRSA Staph bug. This is a little hush-hush, because as I have been coming to realize, people act like MRSA is AIDS or something! It's like, so shameful. Except, you know, it's not like you get it on purpose. And you can get it from just being around sick people in the hospital or at the doctor's. It's not contracted by doing shady, taboo things (at least in all the cases of people I know who have had it.) I don't get it. I do understand it's a big deal and many kids and people have died from certain MRSA infections, but let's arm ourselves with knowledge and deal with it in a mature, safe way. I just don't get the stigma and kind of shush-let's not tell anyone secretiveness. I know staph itself is pretty common, so chances are we all know people who've had it.

So, tell me, what are your thoughts on MRSA, Staph and all the drama surrounding it?

Overheard

"I CAN'T EVEN GET A SNACK ANYMORE, THANKS TO MICHELLE OBAMA."

-One of my more precocious first-graders lamenting the fact that elementary school menus have changed.

Where is this hiding?!

She's Baaaaaaaaack..

Today marked the return of one of my more, um, colorful students, N. I've had her in my art class before, but not since last school year. Let's also add that we are almost done with the sessions, only two classes left. She was a kinder last year and so this year she's in first grade. This apparently has had no effect on her whatsoever. My classroom is on the way to the classrooms where 'The Y" [or the YMCA afterschool program is held). She basically saw me, decided to drop on in for class instead of going to the Y. Nevermind that she isn't signed up for art this trimester. Or that she's supposed to legally be at the Y and they were probably wondering where exactly she was. Or that her older sister popped in to ask if she was signed up and while I was saying no, N was saying yes.
      Last year, she somehow got it out to all the parents of the kids in my class that not only was I married, I was was RECENTLY married. Recently married to her YMCA counselor. Let me give you an idea of this guy: 50's, balding with a bit of white hair left, very flamboyantly gay. So my type...not. So I had all my students' parents coming up to congratulate me and I'm sure get the inside gossip on this relationship because if ever two people didn't go together, it was me and this old guy. I spent weeks explaining.
      So when she walks in today, she throws her backpack on the ground, grabs a whiteboard marker and attempts to hostile takeover the class. After I settled that, she sat down. Except this kid doesn't actually sit. She stands, as if there was no chair whatsoever. I've never actually seen her sit down. Among the things she said today: "Can I see your bra?" [to the 3rd grader next to her], "braces always work, that's the point of them", "umm can you stop that, annnnnnnnnoying" and "can i just be done, i want to go to the Y now". She also colored her entire project orange today. After she colored it all in with different colors, she took orange and recolored the entire thing.
      She also can't ever remember my name, despite the fact that it is written on the board. She regularly calls me 'Mrs. what's your name again'.

Nanny's Best Friend

Things My Nannybabies Will Eat.

For the sake of this blog, the children I nanny will be  collectively referred to as my nannybabies. They are not all really babies; there is actually only one baby, a six month old, a four year old, an eight year old, an eleven year old and a twelve year  old. Codename Nannybabies is good because their dad is a big bossypants and I don't want to get sued.  They will go by their ages. (example: nannybaby .5 is the youngest beebs, nb12 is the oldest, get it?)
     When I first started with this brood, there were only two, nb's 11 and 12. They would only eat olives.

 ...I'm not kidding. All they liked to eat was olives and they literally would eat a whole jar if you didn't supervise them closely. Guess who found that out the hard way.

Now they are grown up preteens and have a much more refined palates. However, nannybaby4 presents similarly difficult challenges. In no particular order these are the things she will eat:

• Cut up raw red bell peppers
• scrambled eggs
•  strawberrie
• , string cheese dipped in strawberry yogurt but not the actual yogurt by itself
•  SHELL macaroni and cheese. If it is any other shape of mac, or any other shape is mixed in with the shells, she will not eat it. 
• She 'used to like chicken nuggets, but not anymore.'  
• Also her new thing is glazed donuts. She's super down for gazed donuts. 

But any of the above foods listed she will only eat two bites of. Eating  three things at once 'makes my[her] stomach hurt." The three things includes water.  Somedays she likes oranges. But only cuties. I once saw her eat seven cuties in one day. That's like her entire body weight in tiny oranges.

Once I tried to make her eat a chicken nugget. Her mom seemed really serious about getting her to eat at least three and then left the house. I got her to chew one, during which she asked to go to the bathroom.  Now, this  nannybaby neverrrr, and I mean never, goes to the bathroom by herself so I knew something was up. She came back and lunchtime was forgotten. Later on I went to the bathroom and noticed spit up chicken nugget in the sink. Verrrrrrry smooth. [Later, I turned this to my advantage when I told her I was an elf hired by Santa to make sure she was nice. When she asked me to  prove it, I told her that Santa told me she once spit her chicken nuggets into the sink. The look of shock on that kid's face. Hook, line and sinker.]

Sometimes

Sometimes I find myself wondering when I hired a five year old as my life coach.

Although I said I would share the undoing of my retail career next, I have decided to save that for another day. So we will move on to another job I have, part time art teacher [more on this later].

A more pressing topic is, just when did five and six year olds get so sassy?! I have a little first grader, I say little because she is supposed to be in kindergarten but they moved her up to first grade..I suspect this is not as much to do with her level of intelligence as much as her advanced social skills and sage wisdom. I'm surprised they didn't just make her a teacher. She has a very Buddhist take on life; if she doesn't feel like coming to art class, she just walks right on by and goes to the YMCA early. Except, you know, her parents pay for art class and expect her to show up there. And being in the wrong place at the wrong time could turn into a legal nightmare for the school and the district. But that doesn't faze her, not at all. On the occasions she decides to grace us with her presence, when the art gods must have spoken with her, she is full of advice for me:
BuddhaBaby: Hey Douglas! You got a boyfriend?
Me: You can't call me Douglas. You can call me Miss D or Miss Douglas, not..just Douglas. And no.
BuddhaBaby: (completely ignores the first part of what i've said) A husband?
Me: No.
BuddhaBaby: Don't you think it's time?  I mean how old are you?
Me: 23.
BuddhaBaby: DOUGLAS (i start to injerject) I MEAN, MISS D, YOU  NEED A MAAAAN!
Me: It's not that easy.
BuddhaBaby: YEAH IT IS. MY MOM WAS MARRIED AND HAD MY BROTHER AT THAT AGE.
::Rest of the class chimes in with the stories of how their parents, too, were married by my age.::

Fast forward to the end of class, where BuddhaBaby's mom is late picking her up, so it's just me and her.
BuddhaBaby: But seriously, Miss D, like you need to find a boyfriend, or at least a husband. You should have one by next class so we can meet him.
Me: It's just not that simple. It's not that easy to meet the person you will marry. Where do you suggest I find this person?
BuddhaBaby: The ophthalmologist's office. You know, the eye doctor's.
Me: Hmmm.
BuddhaBaby: Oh, there's my mom, she's an opthalmaologist, bye!

mystery solved.

Why Retail May Not Be the Industry For Me

My family keeps asking me how I end up working for such lunatics. I have no real answer except that possibly the reason it was so easy for me to get those jobs is because they are always hiring because nobody wants to work there. Here are some examples from previous years:

• Small, beachside boutique. Things are going along swimmingly the very unadjusted-to-America Brazilian store owner until one day she comes in with cameras so she can stay home and talk to me through them. That's right, the cameras not only picked up video and audio in REAL TIME, she could also talk to me through them form her house. Might not sound so weird, but imagine an invisible someone watching you every second of your day and randomly piping in with comments. Super uncomfortable.
• Yeah, Baby store. I worked at a little jewelry store which was next door to an empty store. My manager offered me to the guy renting the store to help set up and work in my off hours. Except, you know, the guy next door was totally nuts. He would leave me with a tagging gun and boxes of clothes and the instructions to 'just make up prices, whatever you think is fair.' He let people write checks. Except you know, he didn't have a bank account. He also was mysteriously unable to get one. I asked him what the store was called, so people could write checks to the store and he said '..uhhh, yeah, baby.' Still not clear if that was what he meant the store was called or what planet he was on. A few times he told me his name was Harold. Except previously he had told me and everyone else his name was Howard. A few months later, after I had left, he texted me saying 'hey man, i'm in croatia, doing medic stuff.' The weirdest guy.
• An art gallery/gift shop that shall remain nameless, because the owner is a crazy person and I wouldn't put it past her to sue me. She had been in a terrible boating accident that left her paralyzed, which is actually really very tragic. Except that she seemed to think I was capable of superhuman tasks myself. She once told me to go a few blocks away and bring her sandbags. Except that they weigh as much as I do...each.  So, you know, that wasn't really going to work  [Luckily there was an NBC newsvan nearby and I somehow sweet-talked the driver into picking up a bunch and driving them over.]. I worked there during a huge flood and she made us bring in hair dryers, supposedly to dry the four feet of water in the store. She also made me give a psychopathic customer my number. [scenario: man comes in to look at 400+ solar globes, pretends he is french and cannot speak english, i call him out on this in french and then explain in english that i took four years of french and wasn't born yesterday. my boss comes over and tells me i need to agree to go out with him and gives him my number. he then proceeds to tell me he is actually homeless right now but loves younger women. He is at least fifty.] She also billed her gallery as 'one of a kind, made in america, local pieces.' Except everything came from China..I know this because I was the one who was made to peel off all the 'made in china' stickers. 

And that brings us to my latest retail position, that story's up next!

Allow Me To [re]Introduce Myself

That's a Jay-Z  song, in case, you know, you're a martian and didn't recognize. Anyyway, welcome to my [new]blog, the first blog in which I actually write my posts. [My other blog is mostly pictures, art and pop culture references.] But some people, including a Miss C Leah, have been peer pressuring me to start a real blog and so here we are, hello.
 Welcome to Nanny Needs a Xanax, a chronicle of my life at this time and all the crazy/stressful/lovely jobs I have. To be clear, I am  not just a nanny. You can add art teacher, office assistant, and up until very recently, terrible salesperson to the list as well. Let's just say I am a woman of many different hats. Also a woman with many hats, but that has nothing to do with this right now. While all my jobs have their moments of great, most days the desire to self medicate kicks in around two p.m. This desire is also often referred to as 'self-preservation.' Although the problem is, none of my jobs leaves much room for this and I might be stressed, but twenty three is a little young to develop a pharmaceutical problem. So rest assured, title is tongue-in-cheek. Stay tuned for the adventure of the world's worst salesperson!