guest entry by Kate
I feel like I need to start by saying that I sort of hate it when people guest-blog or start a new blog or something and they open by verbally brushing the dust off their hands and saying something like, “well, it’s not looking so bad in here – a few plants, a coat of paint, and we’ll be in business” because the whole blog-as-house metaphor and hearty, folksy, chuckles associated with said metaphor have always sort of chapped me.
Having said that, I need to say that I am guest-blogging right this minute, and I find the whole enterprise just delightful.
Having said that, oh my god, I missed you so much, internet. I have no desire to cover you with a new coat of paint or buy you slipcovers, but I missed you when I was gone, I really, really, did. I missed you the way someone might miss an awesome game of tennis: the excitement, the sprinting, the endless thwacking. (I am going to refrain, but just this once, from talking about how I didn’t miss the occasional ball, so to speak, to the face. You can thank me later.)
I missed, most of all, having a forum to tell stories like this one: last fall when I got married and moved to Canada, I took a job as a nanny for a set of three-year-old twins, the mother of whom split her time between being a lawyer and being a CRAZY BITCH. And not to turn this entry into a “this one time at band camp”-style narrative, this ONE TIME, instead of giving me the standard one-week-pay as a Christmas bonus, she instead gave me a travel mug imprinted with her company logo. A. Secondhand. Cup. As a thank-you for raising her children. The payday following Christmas, she handed me my check and said, “Oh, and I have a little something extra for you!” and went into her office. “Ah!” I thought, “A little Christmas bonus!” She came out bearing a picture of the children posing with Santa Claus. A five by seven glossy of her children, whom I saw ten hours a day and whom I took to the mall to have that picture taken. When I got to my car and opened my paycheck I realized it was short, two hundred dollars short, because she docked me for not working Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
I was off New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, and the night before I returned to work I laid face down on the floor cying because I didn’t want to go back. I did, of course, and at seven am the following morning I was wrangling the twins so she could take a shower when she turned to me and handed me a kleenex and asked me to throw it away.
I was halfway downstairs, one child on each hip, when I realized the kleenex contained cat crap.
It was one of 3,000 moments in the last six months that I have thought, MAN, somebody get me some INTERNET, I have something to SAY.