The Babysitters Club

I am on vacation this week, so my posts here may get a wee bit sporadic. And possibly less lucid than usual depending on how much beer I can cram down my gullet after the monsters have gone to bed. We're not going anywhere this year, because some people in this house had, had, HAD, to get new living room furniture, and we have no extra funds to shlep off to some godforsaken vacationland. Instead we're staying home and going to amusement parks and out for ice cream and to basebal games and I am staring to realize that it may have been cheaper to take my wife to Tahiti and leave my kids, who are clearly both in the midst of growth spurts and have resorted to eating wallboard when I won't feed them between their mid-morning snack and early lunch, with the nearest group of itinerant Irish con artists for the week. Plus, they could have learned a trade. Oh sure, learing how to cheat senior citizens out of cash for shoddy driveway repair jobs may not seem that honorable, but when your father's a lawyer, well, anything seems like an upgrade.

Did I mention all the beer? Did I mention it's like 95 today and I spent a hell of a lot of it on a ladder putting primer on the house? Did I mention beer? I did? Good, cuz I've had a lot.

At any rate, some of you offered to babysit in the comments to the last post. None of you meant it, and don't think I don't know that, but I thank you anyway. We did get out, thanks to a combination of my mother and her relief pitcher, a friend of ours who showed up after attedning a wedding reception and slept on our couch for two hours. We paid her for that. Seriously. We're that desparate to get out of the house.

(As I write this, ESPN is doing something about dying kids with cancer meeting their athletic heroes. Not the least bit depressing. Not one bit. Really, I don't feel the urge to slit my wrists. Hopefully, I can hold out for the Yankee score.)

Now, thanks to a combination of heat stroke and chronic alcoholism, I've decided to respond to the generous "offers" to babysit.

Syd. Syd has 50 guns in her house, maybe more. Also lives in Mississippi and recently had whoopng cough. Generally speaking, when we interview babysitters anyone who owns enough guns to win a shoot out with our local polcie force gets big points, since I figure the odds of anyone getting through that sort of firepower is pretty slim. However, anyone getting whooping cough loses a lot of points, as rickets and scurvy can't be far behind. Seriously Syd, there must be a state nearby with better medical care.

Eclectic. Listen you, I have enough problems keeping up with my kids without you coming over for a night and turning them into the sort of superkids you're raising. Also, I'm way to cheap to pay for first class airfare from here to New Haven, to say nothing of Seattle.

CP. If I wanted a bisexual Jewish woman to watch my kids I'd....well, actually, I'd call their godmother, but that's another story.

Big Pissy. My daughter already has an unhealthy fashion with pink. I'm not sure how you would counter that, but I'm fairly certain that you'd finsih painting the house before we got home, but maybe not with the color I intended.

So of all the volunteers, I'm going with, TA-DA, Pud!!. Yep, she didn't volunteer, but I'm going to totally fuck up her "I have no kids party" if it's the last thing I do.