If the bathroom's a rockin...

I’ve wanted to blog about this topic for so very long, but I know it’s wrong. So very wrong. And yet so very right. It’s…it’s…Junior’s babysitter.

It sounded so good in theory. I was going back to work and needed someone a few days a week, here and there, when Charles couldn’t work from home and my mother, Linda, couldn’t be here. When my younger brother, Ted, mentioned that his girlfriend, Holly, was looking for a part time nannying job I thought perfect.

Holly was the ideal person: flexible (schedule-wise, obviously I could give two shits about her muscle tone), sunny, and reliable. Best of all, we knew her. Sort of. They’d only been dating six months but she was better than some psycho on craigslist, right?

Right?

Wrong.

She’s so lazy I want to pull out my hair. I’ve popped home after a meeting to find her sacked out on the couch while Junior is napping. Not just napping, but under the blankets, dead-to-the-world napping. For almost $15 an hour! The only things she was missing were her eye mask and aromatherapy oils. For almost $15 an hour! She doesn’t wash dishes. She doesn’t fold laundry. What she does, best as I can tell, is carry Junior around the house for seven hours a day. Which means when I get home and try to make dinner he doesn’t want to play in his Exersaucer. He wants to be held, nonstop.

Which brings me to today.

Holly couldn’t be here first thing in the morning so Ted said he’d come up and fill in. I had reservations. My brother is 25—a young 25. When he walked in the door and I handed him my child, he said, "I hope he doesn’t poo."

Reluctantly, I headed off to work only to have Ted call me an hour later and ask which direction the diaper tape should be facing.

“Towards his belly.”

“Both pieces of tape?”

Oh Lordie.

He told me not to worry: Holly was on her way.

Well, well, Holly. Looks like Ted never did figure out how that diaper worked, did he? Looks like Junior unleashed his bladder fury on his bed sheets, which you neglected to change. And not only did you leave his sheets in a pee-stained shamble, you left his two stuffed buddies lounging around in the wet mess. Come on, those are his buddies.

But you wouldn’t know that you, would you? Nope, you decided not to give Junior his afternoon nap, which means he was a monster pain in the ass when I got home from work. Have I mentioned that that’s the only time of day I get to spend quality time with my son? When I get home from work?

Have you ever tried to spend quality time with an octopus on a bad LSD trip? Mmmm, that’s how special my night with Junior was.

As if all that isn’t bad enough, Holly made herself some pizza for lunch and left the plastic cutting board in the oven. Guess who decided to bake muffins tonight? Me. And guess who preheated the oven to 400 degrees without checking if anything was in the oven? That’d be me.

Chuck had to whip out the fire extinguisher after we realized the cutting board was on fire.

Are we having fun yet?

It was only 6 p.m. and my plate overunneth. Between the deadbeat babysitter, the overtired, urine scented child who only wanted to be held, and the husband who was pumped up because he actually got to use the fire extinguisher, I needed something.

Some might have turned to alcohol, chocolate, a racy novel.

Oh no, I handed Junior to Chuck and went ape shit on the bathroom.

I'm not exaggerating. I went nuts.

I got on my knees and scrubbed and bleached and sprayed and Pledged and slapped. When I was done I went after the grout with a toothpick. After that I got an old toothbrush and scrubbed the bejesus out of the fixtures.

I combed the damn bath mat. Then I French braided it.

Maybe it was all the fumes but when I finally collapsed on the cool tile I felt like a new woman.

A new woman who needs to find a new babysitter.