hi folks- sorry i have been mia but i went straight from beautiful tahoe to nightmare called a new landlord who thinks the law doesn't pertain to him. so long story short- i am back but had to be a legal eagle instead of writing, blogging, and playing the way i like. but rest assure i am back and the stories of ridiculousness in the landlord arena might appear here in the near future. just some highlights like when the cops came and briefly discussed the issue then hung out at my place for 30 minutes and discussed drinking and handcuffs. believe me they lead that conversations- me and the girls just laughed. because how to kick out the cops? nice-right?
Doing their homework. That wasn’t part of job description. So never have I done it. But I don’t fit the typical description of a nanny. It turned out someone else should have done her homework. Because I used to have a chip on my shoulder about being paid help. But I don’t now. I don’t.
I used to hate how the mom’s would separate into two camps at the school functions and at the performances and the soccer practices. The first camp would befriend me and learn my name and treat me like a human being. The other camp, the 2nd, I refer to them as the assholes, would ignore me, refer to me as Y and K nanny, being introduced 10 times and never once looking me in the eyes. Because I was the help. It used to make my blood boil and I wanted to pull my framed Columbia oh shit I never framed it but I wanted to pull out that diploma. And shove in their faces. Yes I am like you. Or I went to school too. Or I am human. I wanted to give them the prerequisites of the social order of belonging in the world of privilege. Give them my passport of all the cities I lived, all the jobs I had.
I hated being the help. I am a rarity a white educated above 30 nanny. Think if I was a person of color I might have been the leper of urbanity. I used to care. But I stopped. Because because I realized the judgment has nothing to do with me. Because half these women don’t work and half of them get help in raising their offspring. If they choose not to see me, I choose to see them always. Always saying hi and smiling and being jovial because honey always works better than vinegar. Oh it does. I am a domestic like my great grandmother who immigrated at 17 to my neighborhood. She lived a few blocks away doing the same job. The same job of raising other peoples children, part-time. I realized I have freedoms that I never have.
Time to write and lunch and do things I never could do in the office. The children, the freedom of them allowed me to be free of the second camps eyes and raised brows upon their too skinny stature frames for a woman over 40. Judgment might be theirs but freedom is mine. Free to have the luxury to assist someone else in raising great children. Luxury to just be without the credentials. Nothing to prove. Except people should do their homework. Their homework. They should know I matter without the shiny ivy league badge. They should have studied harder that we all matter and the openness of San Francisco has closed their minds to the humanity in front of them. But for me. They are human. Human-failed as I am. In trying to do someone else’s homework. Cheating myself from what could really be. What they could be. My eyes look back to my paper. It’s only for me to do. I don’t need to cover my answers but I don’t need to put the A upon their faces. The pissing contest is over for me. I do my homework. And only pee indoors in toilets. Except it is an emergency or I am camping of course. Rules about homework and peeing all change in the outdoors. They must.
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