are things complicated yet?

The Garden, Week 2: Watching (and thinking about) Dirt

My little pods of dirt didn't see much action this week. I am supposed to keep them warmish (70-80 degrees) so I stuck them on a heating pad in the kitchen window. We had a few days that topped out at 80ish, so I put them outside on those days.

(Can I take a minute to say this is THE BEST WINTER EVER? Seriously, it's like I'm living in California except with a dramatically lower cost of living! It's 60 or 80 almost every day, it hasn't snowed even ONCE, I have worn my winter coat ONE MORNING and right now I am wearing shorts and a t-shirt. THIS IS AMAZING.)

The lids got very condensation-y, which was satisfying and made me feel as if science-like things were going on. To my great surprise, they actually sprouted this week, on day 4! Not all of them, but SOME of them.

Just look at that! I grew something! And now that they're alive I find I am consumed with panicky thoughts about how I'll probably manage to kill every single one before I plant them in the yard. (This is why I planted 72 seedlings. A few should survive, right? RIGHT?)

This was all very good news but it is very boring to spend time looking at dirt and fretting about toothpick-sized plants dying. What I tried to spend my time on last week was figuring out where the garden is going to live in the yard. We have two trees and a large Maple next door that shade most of the space. The house faces SE/NW, so we do get some decent sun, but these three trees combine to make sure that no patch gets full sun, all day long.

Here, I drew you a picture, because writing that was super boring and I am pretty sure that even if you READ it, you still have no idea what my yard looks like.

See? There's not really a good spot to put the garden. If I were to get rid of that Bradford Pear (a totally crappy tree if there ever was one: they split easily, rarely live longer than 30 years [ours is about 20 years] and have a shallow root system) the whole left THIRD of the yard becomes a prime garden area. Plenty of space and sunshine for all of my vegetable dreams.

I called a tree dude and he said he'd remove BOTH trees, grind stumps and haul it all away for $550, which sounds pretty freaking cheap to me. I would like to just ditch the Bradford Pear for now, since Charlotte's swing is in the Magnolia tree and this is a nice baby-containment-device for when Claire and I play outside. (Which is every single day, as winter never really arrived to this part of Texas.)

Once it gets hot and/or Charlotte starts to walk (imminent!) the Magnolia will have outlived its usefulness to me and then it can go. (I've mentioned before about how it was planted too close to the patio and the leaves ohmygod THE BOAT-LIKE LEAVES I hate this tree.)

Now that I had imagined myself a sunny area of yard, I was trying to decide if I should dig up a section of yard to put the tomatoes in or if I should do one of those fancy raised beds, like this:

Source: ana-white.com via Brooke on Pinterest

 

But, that looks like a lot of work and it also means I have to figure out where to buy quality dirt and then have the dirt delivered and something tells me that even though it's just DIRT it is probably kind of expensive. Digging up the yard sounds....simpler, somehow. 

THEN I went down a rabbit hole about the Mittleider Gardening Method and I was all, "Chris! WE SHOULD DO THIS! HIGH YIELD HYDROPONIC WHOOZITS!" but after reading I think it's a lot more work than I am willing to put forth. I am already wondering how to build cages for the tomatoes and keep our flock of neighborhood bunnies away from my tasty vegetables. While the Mittleider Method provides very specific instructions (which I am a HUGE fan of) I think it's too many instructions, even for me. 

After that, I decided I had not spent enough time worrying about my seedlings for the day, so I bought a clamp light and a grow light bulb. Seedlings inside are supposed to get 14-16 hours of sunlight/day because (I think?) the quality of light isn't as good as the actual sun so they need more of it. I'm not sure if these were The Best or The Right things to buy, but I bought them because the only window that gets direct sun only gets it for about 2 hours a day and I figured something is better than nothing.

A few things that make me insane

1. Yielding the Right Of Way. If you don't have a stop sign, but you stop and then hand motion for me to go? NO NO NO NO NO. That is not how we drive in America. I have already gone to the trouble to obey the stop sign and stop, FOR YOU, presumably because the thoroughfare YOU are on requires constant motion to keep traffic moving at a decent clip. When you yield the right of way, you mess everything up. It is also confusing, this polite wave with a big grin.

What? Hiiiiii? Do I know you??? Oh, you want me to go. BUT IT IS YOUR TURN TO GO. No. YOU go.

AGHHH YOU ARE AN IDIOT. THIS IS NOT HOW DRIVING WORKS.

Yielding the right of way breaks the space-time continuum of traffic. DON'T DO IT.

2. Phone books. Why on earth are these still printed? And why are people allowed to dump them on my front door? Does anyone actually USE a phone book these days? You know, someone under the age of 80? No. If I went around dumping trash on other people's front doors, but I called it "marketing!" I do not think people would be okay with that. I think folks might complain. Phone books, and the illegal dumping thereof? No. 

3. People over the age of 30 that leave messages on Facebook saying things like: "Congrats 2 u 4 helping ur friend. U r both the Coolest :)." Oh my God, please leave the country at once because you are what is wrong with America.

4. While we are on the topic of traffic violations, people that take up TWO lanes at an intersection, people that take up TWO parking spaces, people at preschool that park OVER THE LINE. That's a totally smart way to get your car door dinged because when my kid flings it open? IT WILL POP YOUR MINIVAN. 

5. People in stores that ask me if I need help (I politely decline if I don't) but then HANG OUT next to me and talk to my children or ask me about my children when HELLO I HAVE THINGS I AM TRYING TO DO HERE. Stop interrupting my shopping chi.

6. Loud talkers at the gym. 

Turning pages

There is something about my baby brother getting married that remains completely unreal to me, even though I attended the wedding and danced and ate cake and congratulated the happy couple. Days later I find myself rather startled to look around and be all, "Whoa, this is really happening. This DID happen."

Because the thing is, there are just the two of us. Rollin and A'Dell. Peanut Butter and Jelly. Peas and Carrots. A very large part of my life is made of up of endless days and nights where my brother and I watched Star Trek in the evenings, rode school busses in the mornings and packed and unpacked our lives in new houses every few years. We were military kids and we always made friends wherever we lived but at first there was always Just Us and in the end it always went back to Just Us.

Now we are both married and we have our own little family units and it is no longer Just Us. Of course, it hasn't been Just Us for a while seeing as I got married in 2006, but with his marriage it feels like a very heavy and significant page in the story of my life, and my parent's, has turned. The Kids Are All Married Off. The baton has been handed and now we're the ones navigating young families and dealing with things that married people in their thirties deal with. My parents are finished with that phase, and have been for a while. Our generation's turn, now. Officially.

Growing up is such a never ending process. Are we there yet?

***

My favorite part about my brother's wedding was not at the actual wedding. It was at the rehearsal dinner when family and friends were invited to stand up and say things about the bride and groom. It was so lovely to hear other people say things about my brother that I've thought and known for years.

I didn't know that was going to happen at the rehearsal dinner, and if I had I would have prepared some words, but all I could think to say were phrases that sounded trite or weak in my head (and, to my credit, I did have a Fever Baby on my lap). I felt kind of like an ass for not standing up and rambling about something, anything. His only sister and all. But, I am better in print/pixels. I think he knows that.

Time and time again people came to me over the weekend and told me how much they adored my brother and what a wonderful guy he is and how he's so grounded and normal and funny and honest and loyal and kind and a hundred other adjectives that made my heart warm and glowy. And, yes, my brother is all of these things and I knew all of this already, but to hear it from other people made me so happy.

"YES. You know how awesome he is! You ALSO think he's one of the funniest people you know! He is fantastic and also terrible at getting rid of video games from the 90's but we forgive him because it's kind of cute in a nerdy way."

***

Okay, maybe I was wrong about my favorite part. My favorite part of the wedding was the wedding.

The moment she came into view I could see their entire relationship, perhaps his entire life, flash before his eyes, all leading up to this single, defining, moment. Everything he's done, wished for, failed or succeeded at, has led him here and you guys, he looked so happy. 

They were saying their vows and Eden started to get choked up and a bit teary (as brides do) and this sounds so trite but I could actually feel how much she loves him. She was, of course, radiant and exuded happiness that entire evening while making her social visits, but in that moment she appeared alone with him in this great big room filled with hundreds of people, mindful of nothing else but the words, the gravity of their meaning, and him.

It was gorgeous. 

Congratulations, Rollin and Eden. I could not possibly be happier for you.

The Garden, Week 1: Plant Seeds

So! I had a big weekend. My brother got married and Charlotte has her first ear infection but what I think you are all just dying to know about are my tomato seedlings. 

Katie clued me in on Twitter to this darling site called SproutRobot.com where you can put in your ZIP code and it will tell you what to plant and when. I am very fond of the internet telling me what to do, so when the directions for this week told me to start tomatoes indoors, well, I listened. (It was helpful that my seeds came in the mail while we were at the wedding.)

I bought a seed starter thingy at Lowe's a few weeks ago. (This is probably a good time to remind everyone that I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm making this up as I go along.) I had read that a lot of people start seeds in styrofoam cups, old paper egg cartons or other oddball things around the house, with the sentiment seeming to be,

"You don't need to BUY something to start seeds! That's PREPOSTEROUS! A Real Gardener could start seeds in her belly button if she wanted to. It's so easy! Don't buy into the marketing hype!!"

Yes, well. I am not a Real Gardener and I thought I might like a little $7 crutch. It's basically a plastic tray with 72 of those little pop-up things of soil. You pour hot water on it and they puff up and turn into 1.5" cylinders that you can start seeds in. There's a little indentation for each one in the bottom so they all stay in their proper spot.

Next, I got my seeds out. This feels like possibly the only appropriate moment on this website to tell you that I am 1/64 Cherokee. One might say these are My People's Tomatoes. (You know, if you take a multi-generational leap with me.)

Here, see? This is Sarah Lockridge. She is my great-great-great-grandmother and she was born in 1830. She's 1/2 Cherokee. I wonder if she grew tomatoes? Hrm.

Anyhoodle, it took a lot longer than I thought to pluck a few seeds in each pod, but the girls watched with semi-interest and it didn't even make a big mess. In fact, that was my favorite thing about this seed starter tray thingy: it was ridiculously simple and I didn't have to buy a bag of dirt or scoop it around and now all of my seedlings are in a very compact and easy to move around tray. It's all very tidy.

I put two or three in each one and I planted a dozen pods of each variety. I'm hoping half of them germinate and another half make it far enough to planting and another half survive in the yard, which would be 1.5 plants per variety. (I are keeping my expectations LOW.) If I have extra seedlings I'll bet I can find good homes for them because can you even imagine if I had SEVENTY-TWO tomato plants in my back yard?!

No. We are not going there this summer.

I made some labels with toothpicks so I don't forget what's what.

And then I stuck the lid on and walked away. I think they are supposed to get 14-16 hours of sunlight/day to really do well, so I'm thinking of rigging some kind of fluorescent light over them and then making jokes about my growhouse and pretending I'm on Weeds.

If my tomatoes die, I will be SO PISSED.

I have decided to give myself another role I can add to any future bios I might have to (painfully) write for myself: GARDENER.

I was really waffling about whether to go ALL IN on the garden and throw a bunch of seeds in the ground and build my own tomato cage from rebar, or start small with one or five plants from Lowe's and see how that went. I went back and forth on this for a while. On one hand, I would love to be An Amazing Gardener Type Person and grow lots of delicious things and basically bathe in tomatoes all summer long because I am So So So Good at it. On the other hand, it felt like I was setting myself up for a huge disappointment if they failed. So much time and energy and heart....WASTED. (Possibly.)

Then I decided that if I did go the simple, "just visit Lowe's"  route, I'd be frustrated if it turned out well. "Just THINK of what I COULD have done!"

So. I have purchased seeds. A lot of seeds. We (hope) to be eating:

Tomatoes

Brandywine (Elizabeth told me to buy it.)

Mr Stripey (I admit, I could not resist this name. I shall be cooing to Mr Stripey all season. "Oh, Mr Stripey! How are you doing today!? Would you like a spot of water? It's dreadfully warm today, don't you think?") (I have possibly watched too much Downton Abbey.)

Amish Paste (I don't really know what this is but people say it's good for sauce.)

Black Krim (I picked it randomly. It looked kind of pretty.)

Cherokee Purple (Elizabeth told me to buy it.)

Yellow Pear (I just like these little suckers and they're pretty in a salad.)

Herbs

Thyme, Oregano, Mint, Basil, Cilantro

Other delectamables

Cucumber, Okra, Bell Peppers, Scallions. 

Oh, and lettuce. I got lettuce because Elizabeth says it grows anywhere and is very simple and is very satisfying to be all, "Let me go get some lettuce from my yard for a salad!" I think I got some kind of butter leaf lettuce variety packet.

We'll start the seeds that need to begin indoors when they get here (next week, I think?) and I have no frakking clue what I'm doing but I am pretty sure I will get my hands dirty and I will swear a lot but it will all be worth it if I get my plate of tomatoes to feast on come May. (Or, June? Have I mentioned I have no idea what I'm doing?) Claire is going to help and I anticipate that much of our day will revolve around the feeding and care and maintenance and OH SHIT PLEASE DON'T DIE mentality of the garden.

Let's do this shit. Mama wants a homegrown caprese salad this summer.

A variety of things I am fretting about

I would like a garden this summer. I think it would be a good activity for Claire and I to take on, I would certainly like the satisfaction of growing some food, and most of all I would like a never ending supply of delicious tomatoes to feast on for months and months and months.

But...I don't really know anything about a garden. I have been reading a lot about gardening in Texas and Elizabeth has been tutoring me but...it feels like a lot of effort to go from a plain old back yard to a legit garden. I mean, I'll probably have to...dig...and...other things? I think? And then the hot, awful, cruel, Texas summer sun will probably kill everything and oh man, I would be SO PISSED.

That's what gardening is, right? Just waiting to get your heart broken by tomatoes?

***

Charlotte has had the sniffles for two weeks and while it is just the sniffles and no fever or cough or anything else (she sleeps and eats fiiiiiiine) part of me thinks that two weeks of sniffles is too much and she needs to go to the doctor, just to see. 

But. I kind of don't want to pay $150 to go to the doctor with our crappy health insurance if my gut says it's nothing but the sniffles. This is the shit-getting-real part of having crappy health insurance (which is a new adventure for us and I owe you a post on this topic) and it's so frustrating to be weighing cost versus health. Ideally, money would be no object when it comes to the health of my preshus baybeee but this is not the reality I live in.

Obviously, if she was very ill I would spend every last dime we had to help her, but this is The Sniffles. I cannot afford to spend $150 on every bout of The Sniffles With No Fever Or Other Indicators (I would be there every third day, OMG) and so I have to pick and choose in a weird game that doesn't really benefit anyone involved. SIGH. 

(FRET.)

***

When I had a cubicle job I was really good at prioritizing things and getting shit done. But now I find that it often takes me several hours in the morning to just pony up the energy to talk myself into leaving the house. The children are so DEMANDING in the morning. If would be helpful if they ran a similar schedule, but they don't. Charlotte is up first and she must be fed, changed, played with. Then Claire gets dressed and wants to eat. Somewhere in there I am supposed to take a shower and dress myself and probably the baby wants to eat again and needs another diaper and she has very likely barfed on herself which means ANOTHER outfit. And it's barely 830 in the morning.

There are toys everywhere, almost instantly upon sunrise, and leaving the house feels sometimes like I am leaving the scene of a domestic crime.

The Home That Needs Cleaning Very Badly, Even Though The Housekeeper Came Four Days Ago.

The Home Where They Don't Do The Dishes Every Night.

The Home With Wet Laundry Still In The Washing Machine From Last Night.

The Home With Scattered Disorganized Piles In Some Corners That Everyone Has Good Intentions To Sort Through Very Soon

The Home With Breakfast Dishes Still On The Table.

I feel guilty leaving a messy house. (As if someone is going to see it before I get back? No. I don't know.) Even though I recognize it's a battle of attrition keeping up after the two of them and their wake of destruction and wants and needs and tantrums, I like the idea of having a clean house and having everything kind of...In Its Place when I leave for the day to run errands. It feels very full-circle and neat and tidy when I manage this.

This is a really dumb idea, I know, but it's sometimes paralyzing. There are days when I think, "We'll go run that errand when I get the kitchen clean!" and then it's suddenly 1pm and children are napping and...crap nothing is getting done today.

Stupid kitchen.

***

We are supposed to have booked the Miles Bankrupt vacation by now, but we haven't because I can't seem to muster the energy to decide where to go. I can't even find the courage to enter a three-character airport code into AA.com to see what seats are available to where because booking travel is probably one of the top three things I hate the most about the internet. (This is humorous considering I worked for a very notable online travel agency for SIX YEARS.)

It's just such a pain and exercise in denial. No seats! No good times! No good dates! Oh, seats! NOT TOGETHER AGHHHH. It is this way because we are using miles and not even the good kind of highly transferable credit card miles, no, we're using Aadvantage miles, which are the worst miles of all, on the crappiest airline where everyone is mean and has a bad attitude.

Anyway. I think we are going to go to Kauai or the Big Island. We had been thinking Caribbean but I think I just don't want to go there for a variety of reasons that have to do with hurricanes, bad food, too many connections, and (possibly incorrect) preconceived notions I have as a result of a cruise several years ago.

See? I have a mostly free vacation just waiting for me and I manage to make it so difficult I can't even TRY to book it.

This is a special kind of talent I have. God must have a very specific plan for me.

About the babysitter

So, we don't have a babysitter.

(Perhaps this should be titled, "About the complete LACK of babysitter.)

This means we don't ever go out, just the two of us, unless we are visiting a set of grandparents. We're lucky to have two sets of overly-enthusiastic-about-babysitting grandparents that live close by, but they're still several hours away. Nice as that is, it only happens a few times a year. Date night is not something we enjoy on the regular. (Although, I do hear date night CAN get boring after a while.)

This sounds terrible, doesn't it? It sounds like we're cooped up in the house, bemoaning our lack of social life and time without children, going a modern version of domestic crazy. Except...that's not really what's going on. See, we're not that popular. We don't get invited to a lot of cool places or neat parties. In fact, we only get invited to cool places or neat parties when our children are the guests and we're just the tag along parents. A super fun, no-kids-allowed invitation graces my inbox...perhaps twice a year. In the past 12-months I had to say no to an out-of-town wedding and a hockey game. See? Just two things.

We are missing things we like to do by ourselves: concerts and sporting events, movies, fancy dinners with $10 slices of chocolate cake. Fortunately, these are all things we can easily do in other cities so, like I've said, it's not really a big deal to me that we don't have a babysitter. In fact, I hardly ever think about it. We seem to keep pretty busy.

I would probably keel over from happiness if a set of grandparents moved in across the street from us, like in Everybody Loves Raymond. No, really, I would be OVERJOYED. All of you people that have one (or two!) sets of grandparents in town? I am so jealous. If your grandparent has a regular, standing babysitting date with your kids? EVEN MORE JEALOUS.

And yet, I recognize this is a very temporary stage of life with two very young children and once they're older and can basically run things themselves and tattle on a weird babysitter and know when to say HELL TO THE NO, then we'll find someone that can make sure they don't kill each other while we're out watching Downton Abbey: The Movie sometime in 2016. (WHAT? A GIRL CAN DREAM.) Or, maybe a great babysitter will fall in our laps in between now and then and the problem will solve itself.

Anyway, "Get A Babysitter" is not really high on my list of things to do.

Chris has been maneuvering to change this. He's been emailing me not-so-subtle pictures of the bulletin board at the community center, with ads for high school girls looking for babysitting jobs and he's brought up things he'd like to do (that I'd like to do, too!) but then I give him a look and it says, "Um, we gots no babysitter, dude. Did you forget that part?" And then he says something ground-breaking like, "BUT WE COULD GET ONE AND THEN WE COULD BE FREEEEEEEEE." After all, he is a normal person and he would like to spend time with his wife without someone whining about Cheerios and making his ears bleed. I understand this. I want these things too.

But, man. Finding a babysitter sounds like the worst task EVER.

Ideally, our babysitter would be a high school age girl that is nerdy enough to not have a boyfriend or be so popular that she's never available on the weekends. She would be smart, Red Cross certified in a number of things, live close by so I don't have to go get her and drop her off, and be trustworthy beyond belief. To be truly perfect, she would be the daughter of a close friend so that I have an idea of what kind of family she has, her values, and the ever-present knowledge that if she screws something up I KNOW HER MOTHER.

(In other words, she would be ME at age 16. I made thousands of dollars babysitting when I was a high schooler. I vacuumed and did dishes. I was very popular with parents.)

I live in the suburbs, so you'd think I would know a boatload of families that meet this criteria. But, remember, we're not that popular. I actually don't know a single teenager or young college/first-job aged adult that I'd trust to spend time, unsupervised, with my children. Well, I take that back. I have exactly TWO relatives in the Dallas-Ft Worth area that I'd let watch my kids. One is my brother-in-law (he's watched Claire before, is very good with her, trust him 100% to call 911 at the appropriate moment) and the other is my first cousin (I'm not entirely sure he has any babysitting experience but he's a solid guy and in a pinch I'm sure he could play trains for two hours).

They both live really far across town and have their own social lives and I suspect babysitting is not super high on the list of Fun Friday Night Stuff! for them. (They would probably rather go to the bar on weekends. I sure did when I was their age.) Also, Jennie watched the girls once last December so we could go to a Christmas party and that might be one of the top-five nicest things anyone has ever done for me. But other than that, NADA.

***

Last fall the entire Penn State situation made me realize there was another reason I was ho-hum about babysitters. Because we lack an already-existing trustworthy person, trying to find some STRANGER just for the sake of a dinner out seems...really stupid. Yes, yes, I know about background checks and references and all of that but another adult in my house, alone with my kids? An adult that I am "trying out?" I cannot wrap my brain around that to think it's something I'd be comfortable with.

(This is one reason I never pursued a nanny for Claire while I was working. I very much like the idea of accountability that you get in a group setting.) (Although, it could be argued that's what the Penn State parents thought they were sending their kids off to so you're damned all the way around on this one. Let's just go live in the closet with some rations for the rest of our lives and stay safe together, away from the horrible, cruel, awful world.)

In theory, I love the idea of paying someone to watch my kids while I hit the town with my husband. But I am not going to leave my kids with just ANYONE. The idea of calling one of these high school girls and "trying her out!" sounds kind of odd. I mean, how does one "try out" a babysitter? How does one evaluate a randomy person with basic algebra skills to see if you trust her with your children? This doesn't seem like a very good idea, even if the only trauma that happens is to me from wondering WHAT IS GOING ON BACK AT THE HOUSE RIGHT NOW? IS SHE SMOKING POT? IS SHE TEACHING HER HOW TO THROW UP OR CUT HERSELF? IS SHE TALKING ABOUT THINGS THAT MAKE YOU FAT? IS SHE TALKING ABOUT MONSTERS THAT LIVE UNDER BEDS? CLAIRE DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT MONSTERS UNDER THE BED.

Because whoa, beyond physical or sexual abuse (AWFUL-AWFUL-AWFUL TO THINK ABOUT) there are a LOT of subtle and direct ways to poison a kid's brain and in an isolated setting WHO KNOWS what words are being traded. The most likely truth is that just trains or blocks or endless episodes of Sid the Science Kid is what would be happening at the house. But Claire (and certainly Charlotte) are still young enough that they don't quite know the difference between right and wrong and what adults are supposed to do/not do. It is SO AWFUL to have to think about these things as a parent but, well, I have to. I do.

Possibly an extreme and needlessly panicky place to mentally live? Maybe. But, it's where my brain lives on this topic and I find that I'm pretty inflexible on it.

Claire is still young enough that I filter quite a bit. She is so impressionable at age three. She will believe, literally, ANYTHING an adult tells her. I tell her the truth (most of the time) but some topics just aren't brought up to my three-year-old. I still remember the time some adults told me in graphic detail about Jesus' crucifixion when I was in kindergarten. The idea of NAILS in a HAND was so horrible and gruesome to me that looking at an image of the crucifixion, for years, brought to mind questions of,

"Why on earth would someone DO that? It doesn't even make SENSE. And it's so GROSS. This is so weird. This whole this so, so weird."

I'm not saying that person ruined religion for me, but it was certainly a topic that I hadn't been prepped for and with no follow-up or context (and how would my parents have known to follow up!?) my imagination ran kind of wild for a few years on that one. 

So, things like that: age appropriate and inappropriate conversations, actions, television shows, questions about the meaning of life, ETCETERA. 

I suppose the biggest reason I ignore my husband's questions about finding a babysitter is that I don't really want one, for dark and ugly reasons I've seen happen to other children on television. I know I can't keep her in a bubble forever, and it's not my intention to. She goes to preschool, she's been in daycare, she will continue to go places and see people and I will leave her in trustworthy places. She has been and will continue to be influenced by other people. But not alone, in my home, by someone I don't really know all that well.

The safest thing seems to be...not hiring a babysitter until someone trustworthy comes along. And, yeah, I KNOW that even people who are seen as trustworthy might still be weird or crazy or abusive (and they always say those people are the most likely to abuse, I KNOW) but there is only so much screening a person can do. A trustworthy person seems like a better place to start than "Stranger On A Bulletin Board With Nothing To Lose."

If I had a regular need for a babysitter I might be more inclined to follow through on a search. If, say, I had someone come to the house every Tuesday and Thursday for a few hours and then maybe I wanted to be able to call her on some weekends? Then that feels like more of a relationship to be had and she could watch the kids while I'm here at first, while we get to know her. But to randomly try and find someone for random nights? I just don't think I can do that right now.