godDAMNit (long work rant)

i hate my job.
hate it.
HATE. IT.

on the one hand, the little girl i work with truly is an unpleasant and potentially emotionally troubled person (i really can't tell the difference at this age between personality disorders and just being a bitch). the particular way in which she is difficult is extremely hard for me to deal with personally. she is just emotionally exhausting for me. every single second of every single hour i spend with her she is bitching, crying, or talking nonstop and demanding i listen to every word. her mood swings are swift and unexpected.

on the other hand, she probably wouldn't be quite so bad if her parents gave her any kind of boundaries or discipline - or expected anything from their children besides looking cute and being reasonably intelligent.

her brother is just your standard depressed teenager, and we enjoy each other unless i'm put in a position to make sure he does something productive, ever.

what i hate so much about working with this family is not that the kids are so bad, because really, i've seen worse. it's that they won't give me the authority to help their kids be better and more stable people, but they won't exercise their own authority. it's like they genuinely don't want to be bothered with the unpleasant side of parenting. they don't want to be responsible for discipline, they don't want to listen to any whining or complaining, and they definitely don't want to be bothered by their kids at all until the weekend.

i took this job genuinely thinking that i would be like a stand-in parent, and when they came home from work they would take over. that just isn't true. they don't follow through on making sure the last of the homework gets done or any scheduled chores get done, and the kids know full well that if they can put it off until their parents get home then they won't have to do it at all.

these parents act like they don't have to exert any effort at all to raise their kids, because isn't that what they pay me for?

the worst part is, the other family i work for, i really like. their kids are much younger, and they're all just more down to earth (at least the mom is). they're really involved in their kids' lives even when they can't be there, and they're actually interested in my teaching experience and what i can do to help their kids with learning (academically and, for lack of a better word, morally). the other family likes the idea of their nanny being a teacher, but they aren't remotely interested in using me to their (or my) advantage.

but i'm working too many hours, and i'm going to snap soon. i thought it would get back to normal after summer break was done, but now i'm working more hours with The Good Family (tm), so i'm still doing 9-10 hours days, never with more than a half-hour break and a few times a week with no break at all. i like the overtime pay, but i can't take it much longer. the problem is that i don't see how i can reduce my hours without only reducing my time with The Good Family. right now, working with them is just about the only thing that keeps me working there at all.

i'm stuck between a rock and a hard place here - if i spend less time with The Good Family and don't reduce my time with The Bad Family, i will burn out quicker. damn quicker.
if i don't reduce my total hours, regardless of who they're with, i will burn out very damn quickly indeed. increasing time with Good Family and decreasing time with Bad Family isn't an option at all.

but if i don't work there, what the fuck else am i gonna do?
i've never made this much money full-time before, nowhere close.

The Great Oogie Boogie

man, i fuckin' hate sinus infections. i can't believe i used to get these like, constantly. i once had a sinus infection for 3 months straight.
how did i live?! was i just tougher, more rugged and manly and un-sissified?
or was i just emotionally desensitized to physical misery, like a plucky Irish orphan?

finally, at the ripe old age of 30, i've found something i feel irrationally entitled to: no ailments lasting longer than 2 days.

i can cheerfully withstand any amount of severe pain as long as i know it will be over relatively soon. i even cracked jokes at my extremely painful IUD fitting last month.
but sustained discomfort makes me come all undone.

i don't think i should be required to do more than bathe myself and moan piteously, because goddamn it, my head will NOT stop producing snot!!
you'd think at some point my system would run out of the raw materials needed to produce mucous, but no. if i could find an industrial use for snot, i could contribute to the war effort and do my part for America.

movie review: Happy Endings

i like to check out http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ when i'm thinking about going to see a movie, largely because it seems to have no standards as to the reviews it compiles. Rotten Tomatoes doesn't only care about professional, learned reviewers with an edumacation. no siree, there's Joe Blow's Movie Reviews Dot Com right there next to Filmschool FancyPants, Ph. D.

i like the inherent socialism of that system very much.

anyways, i wasn't initially interested in "Happy Endings", in part because of a poor Tomatometer rating, but then i saw Maggie Gyllenhaal on The Daily Show, and swooned, and changed my mind. i said "hey, it'll suck, but who cares?! cute girl!"

i am here to officially tell you that the Tomatometer has failed! this movie is great!!

"Happy Endings" is adorable without being mindless, every single last person in it is nice to look at in a way that doesn't make you feel bad about your own reflection, and it's hilarious without a single joke or pratfall. i highly recommend it.

do i think it needs an oscar? not particularly, but "high art" isn't the only worthwhile kind of art. this movie is smart and interesting and fun to watch, and you leave in a better mood than when you came in.

now, that said...
Jason Ritter is disturbingly identical to his late father, and it was continually alarming to me to hear someone else's voice come out of a face i've been looking at for 30 years. he's an excellent young actor who shares NO similarities to his dad but his face - it's just i've had a lifetime John Ritter, and only 2 hours of Jason.

usually, i am so good about this.

if i even get a whiff that i am on the stick end of a friendship imbalance, i start detaching myself. my emotional framework is simply too weak to handle liking people significantly more than they like me.

i spent so many years genuinely believing that if i was there for someone and cared for them, they would do the same in return, and it just plain does not work that way. you can't make someone love you, no matter what you do. but that isn't going to stop most people from taking what you give without reciprocation. perfectly nice people, too; they don't mean to hurt you - they're just not looking out for you because they don't care. that's not a crime.

i got burned over and over and over again, and at some point i knew i couldn't do it anymore. i cannot emotionally invest myself in people who aren't going to do the same. it isn't an option.

i've never really had a problem falling for The Wrong Guy(tm), but apparently i have a real tough time with The Wrong Friends(tm). so i thought i'd try the same strategy: with men, i just don't care about people who aren't going to treat me fairly well and stick around. if i think they will, and i find out i'm wrong, it's really not very difficult for me to stop caring about them.

i also don't jump off high places, drink and drive, shake my ass in military bars, do drugs, or vacation in the middle east. because these things are very likely to get me hurt, so i don't like to do them.

but then sometimes one or two slip through, and i just feel so goddamned stupid for caring.
:(

yackety yack

the little girl i nanny for is going through this phase she goes through about every 5th or 6th week. she starts talking INCESSANTLY.

i don't mean she talks a lot. i talk a lot. talking a lot i can handle.

i mean speaking, literally, without ceasing. yammering on and on about nothing until it becomes like playing a record backwards. at first, it's just a droning gibberish, but after a while you start to hear satan telling you to do bad things.

today, she suddenly turns to me and says, "kirsten?"
"...kirsten? kirsten? kirsten?"
"WHAT."
"i think i know how come i've been talking so much this week."
"is that so?"
"well, every time i have a thought, like maybe about how my dad asked to put away my socks this morning and i did it, after i have the thought i just say it. "
"uh-huh..."
"so every single thing i think, i say out loud!"
"that's a lot of thoughts."
"yeah. that's a lot of talking."
"...maybe you could try only saying those thoughts that require an answer, like, f'rinstance, maybe if you thought about your favorite something and wanted to start a conversation and asked me if i had a favorite thing, that kinda stuff. or if it was something important you really, really wanted to share... "
"yeah...kirsten, i really wanted to share about how my dad asked me to put away my socks this morning, and i did...*giggle*."
"that's funny. you know, satan suggested that i duct-tape your mouth shut. what do you think about that?"

okay, so the last part only happened in my head.
so far.

i can change, baby

i swear, i'll be good to you. i'll post like, all the time.
whenever i have something to say.
even if it's dumb.

like, uh...
i can't decide if i should secure the front of my wrap-tie shirt so that my brassiere doesn't show, or if that would look dumber and possibly contribute to the potential erroneous-maternity-shirt look.

see?

i bet i misspelled all kinds of stuff in that, too. and i'm not going to spellcheck it, either. that's how committed i am to you, baby.

*blank stare*

weird.