Confessions of a Childcare-giver

I'm not so pro at eating pizza in bed with my laptop yet, but I just couldn't resist the surprise leftovers I came home to on an empty stomach after babysitting just now. I could've eaten anything at the family's house, but I didn't realize how hungry I was till I opened the pizza box in my kitchen and my heart filled with glee. Even further, after just eating half a slice, it was apparant that one of the reasons I had been so tired was because I hadn't eaten in 8 hours.

Babysitting is always an adventure. Once or twice a month I am called on by a sweet couple I met to watch their two and four-year old boys for a few hours. Progressively each time I had fallen more and more in love with them, especially the innocent toddler whose infectious laugh makes me melt inside. But tonight we've crossed a certain threshold where all of the sudden these sweet boys are TOO comfortable around me that they won't physically leave me alone. One or both were attached to my body at all times, often with a hand in the face or legs somewhere up around my shoulders. No longer is the infectious laugh cute when it results from repeatedly smacking me with a pillow while the other attempts to conquer my person like King Kong and the Empire State Building.

Were their parents secretly keeping them locked up all day so all their energy could be released all on me, or is there really that much sugar in two tubes of gogurt? Two and four-year olds may be able to repeat the words please and thank you, demonstrating that they can pretend to have manners when you remind them, but neither age group knows the meaning of the word "no." As in, no you may not jump on my stomach just because I lied down on the floor for 5 seconds, and no you may not keep climbing onto the railing and almost killing yourselves falling down, and no you may not keep eating all the food in your fridge even though I know you can't still be hungry.

Me, after putting M & G to bed

Everytime I see this family, the two year old has learned new words, and the ones that showed up most tonight were very centered around some common themes. No way could I have not understood that "nack" with a point to the cupboard obviously meant "feed me now." No way did I underestimate the importance little M laid on how much he wanted to climb on my shoulders, when the sequence of vocabulary went from "move" to "back" to "stand up."

No clearer have any commands been from this almost three year old who's graduating from his crib soon. I do not look forward to the day when I get to put him to sleep only to hear him crawl right out and go back to playing with his toys. This is not just annoying, but very worrisome, as he is nicknamed El Destructo for his superhuman ability to get into anything and cause a ruckus. Just today he scared me half to death whenever he attempted to climb on his toy box to turn off the light and fall in. I know I may have some extra padding around my gluteus maximus area, but if I were him, I wouldn't be so thrilled about landing on so many hard, plastic items. I do have to hand it to the kid, though, for being such a daredevil and not even crying the many times he's fallen off the couch or taken a buzz lightyear to the butt.

If all this is making me sound like a horrible caretaker, you'll be even more delighted to know I let them watch Cops on TV. It was the only thing that made them sit still for 5 minutes, and I was NOT going to give that up. Besides, they're too young to know what any of it means, so I don't think any harm was done. But really, I'm actually doing a pretty dang good job of watching them, since no phone calls to the parents have been made, let alone tears shed by either of the boys from an injury. That in and of itself is an accomplishment to be noted.

Despite the boys being super hyper and good at not listening to me tonight, I still presently enjoy the few occasions I get to see them. Babysitting not only puts a pleasing amount of cash in my wallet, but it's fun because their smiles delight me so. Plus, being around kids is almost an instant boost of self confidence, since you don't have to worry one bit about them thinking your hair is greasy or you don't sing as well as Carrie Underwood. As long as you're giving them attention, you will be loved, and that love is a nice thing to feel.

Christmas Partays

Oh how I love my fellow Intervarsitites! Intervarsitians ... Intervarsinese ... Intervarsitish ...

Two Christmas parties thus far involving these folk have put a smile on my face already during the month of December of o-ten. Actually, more than a smile. Last night tears were streaming down my face not once, twice, but three times, from laughing so hard at our funny selves! Our crazy shenanigans from the shin-digs have included plenty of ugly sweaters, funny portraits, Guitar Hero collaborations, candy cane cookies, and more. If this weren't my blog (being entirely open for the world to see), I'd put pictures up that documented the occasions. Perhaps in the print version of this so-called "yearbook" of mine, I'll put some photos in where they should be.

Last night, at the advisement of one of our wiser and more experienced friends, we watched White Christmas, a movie I had never heard of. It's one of those old flicks with dancing and singing ... haha, a musical I guess. Bing Crosby stars with 3 other leading actors who all did a fantastic job in this film that has it all - a love story, humor (yes, I laughed!), Christmas spirit, that cute old-fashioned feel, sentimental warm fuzzies, and plenty of adorable outfits worn by the women that left me wanting to live their lives. Those empire waists and flowing skirts ... sigh. Such glamour! Such poise! Such elegance! Not to mention the dancing was phenomenal - extremely entertaining, and seemingly a blast to perform.

Of course this 1954 movie was where the song "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" originated. When Bing Crosby sings any song, the sound is so fantastically rich, it's like listening to the dark chocolate of voices. I couldn't help but feel like I was indulging, by simply allowing the sound into my ears. Indulge as well, as you listen to this clip from the movie and consider watching the whole thing yourself:

Scantron Failure

And the Nobel Piece Prize for Scantron Failure in 2010 goes to ... the List Girl! 

This chick here is a bonafide retard when it comes to filling out scantron forms. For some reason it takes an unusually large amount of effort to get the right bubbles filled in with the right numbers, and matching up with the answers I actually want to choose. I have missed questions on tests that I knew the right answers to because I simply filled in the wrong bubble. This is a big deal in college! Every little multiple choice counts! Additionally, at other times I can fill in the right bubble but it will be on the wrong line, and I'll have to go all the way back to the root of the problem and erase like 20 answers. It always worries me that I don't erase the wrong ones all the way because the machines are so picky about that and I don't want to be marked down because there was still some smudging left, due to a crappy eraser. I made at least 5 mistakes like these today on one scantron sheet alone. Go me...

And there was even one time this semester in class where we completed a practice quiz with about 25 questions and I intelligently started my answers at #2 instead of #1. The beauty of this (yes, sarcasm) was that I had no way of realizing I messed up until I got the sheet back graded with an entire line of red marks on the side, indicating almost every one of my answers was wrong. Imagine my embarrassment when I had to ask my professor if I could fill out a new one. This wasn't 5th grade, this was college. He must think my ACT score was a 12 or something. (However, if this was the case, I could just blame it on my inability to fill in the right bubbles - who knows, maybe I'm still a genius and that is my only error.)

On a somewhat related note, does anybody else get excited when they have four answers in a row that are of the sequence A C D C ? Because it just tickles me. :)

Catching Up With Nothing of Any Real Importance, But Still Interesting Stuff

Hello, blog, long time no see. You've missed me, have you? Well that's nice to hear. I'm kind of having a writing crisis this season, as you may have noticed, since I haven't posted very much in the past few weeks. I feel bad but I just can't do it ... hopefully this funk goes away and I can get back to my regular schedule and get back to loving blogging again.

But here I am, trying. I have no subject for this post yet. I thought I might talk about how much of a creeper I am, since within minutes of posting a facebook status about it, I got 3 or 4 likes. Meaning it was a successful discussion topic ... ? I'm rather pleased that my statuses have been doing so well recently, capturing many likes and comments on each one. I feel like facebook isn't such a waste if people actually pay attention to my activity and conversation is generated.

You know what would be really sweet? If I could publish the spectacularly awesome white paper on this blog that I've been putting so much time into with my group in Technical Writing. We finally finished today after hours and hours of work and stress. It was a 6 week long project that spanned many documents, assignments, and a presentation. I'm so proud of our professional piece of work completed today, it could legitimately be a real white paper produced in a successful business. Of course now that we've spent so much time being nit-picky on every bit of language in the 15 pages, I can't help noticing all the flaws I already have in this one post. BUT I don't care. :) I get to be myself on this blog and I write the way I think, which is in no way perfect.

Back to the creeper thing though - 

Funny story, but I happen to have recently developed a crush on this amazingly designed specimen in my accounting class. He's kind of gorgeous. Quiet and mysterious. (And by kind of gorgeous I mean he's really attractive.) I've never talked to him, and I don't know anything about him except that he asks smart questions, falls asleep adorably sometimes in class because of his work (?), and does not wear a wedding ring. In proper detective fashion, I carefully listened the last time our professor was handing out graded tests, and I caught his last name (it came right before mine!). Upon filing that piece of information away in a safe place in my brain, I was able to look up the one e-mail our professor ever sent the whole class, and scanned the list of recipients till I found his last name. Luckily our school e-mails consist simply of our first and last name, so with that one step I gained the most important part - his whole name!

I owe much thanks to Mark Zuckerburg for ever creating facebook because within seconds I had found him on the internet and was gazing upon his very nicely done profile pic. It's not one of those you can place in a category on a mockery list of all the stereotypical douche pics guys always use (the party pic with beer in one hand and arms around friends in a dark location, or the phone snapshot in the bathroom mirror, etc.). I didn't friend him or anything, that would definitely be really weird. I don't know why I was compelled to look him up at all, but at least now I know his name. I'm really hoping he's in my next accounting class. So yeah. That's my story of creeperness for this week. My services are available in exchange for suitable compensation.

In other news:

- Harry Potter 7 is a good movie.
- I'm even more in love with the new Taylor Swift album.
- I've been producing a lot of awesome mix cd's for friends that I wanted to just upload the playlists for, but they're all specialized to each person and purpose, so that might be ineffective for other people to see.
- Ugly Christmas Sweater Parties are fun, even if they end early. I shall post about that later when the pics are up.
- I had my first Mormon Muffin a few weeks ago. It was HEAVENLY.
- I'm also REALLY enjoying the Hunger Games series!! Man, those books have the best cliff-hangers I've ever seen. You simply MUST obtain the next book as soon as you're done with one. Good thing they're all out now because I would have a hard time waiting a few months/years for more to be published.
- If I had my way this Christmas, I would get the normal amount of presents, plus about 5 pairs of converse on top of that. I can't look at their website without finding too many pairs that I want, but they're all so expensive!
- On the Christmas note, we have a real tree this year, finally. I was expecting it to smell of pine but it actually isn't that fragrant at all. I want to buy a pine-scented candle to light next to the tree so when people come over, they're really impressed with how good the "tree" smells.
- Also pertaining to Christmas, my highly organized and geeky CD Wish List, complete with priority ranking:

I love Excel. I also love music. I also think I might love accounting. I'm thinking I should work for some sort of music production company's finance division. (Wow, that was one noun-compact phrase if there ever was one.)

How to BS
Speaking of technical writing, again (the reference, if you didn't catch it, was in that last statement in parentheses), I have to say that I have actually benefited a lot from this class. I think everybody should take it, because people these days suck at writing intelligently. Our book is great - Technical Communication by Mike Markel   - especially the chapter on "Writing Effective Sentences." It's all about being concise and clear, and eliminating unnecessary words. Very useful for professional documents, but also if you apply the concepts in reverse, it's a great instruction guide for how to BS.

The high school I come from gave us lots of practice in that (unintentionally of course), but these techniques are even more helpful. I can't claim it's a good thing for college students to follow this advice in making papers longer because I expect professors catch onto these things and aren't appreciative of our deceitful efforts. But I bet such tactics work wonders for high school kids. So if anybody who's reading this post is in high school, I recommend you pick up a copy of that textbook. If you're smart, you can find out which principles to use from chapter 10 that it actually advises against that will work wonders for adding length and fancy-speak. The book also has legitimate chapters that tell you how to write a good argument, which you'll end up learning anyway in regular english classes.

That's all I have to say for now. I hope to be back soon but I can't make any guarantees. At least know that my absense is not due to laziness, but other more complicated reasons that I can't explain.

I bid thee farewell.