i'm not very good at sleeping

but whatever. so much to blog about, so little time. well, almost. it's definitely true that i'm capable of doing the most when i have a million things to do. and when i don't have a million things to do, well...i watch a lot of reality tv.

however. since we last left off, i started working at a babydaycare. so far i've worked one full day and one half day, and i have the same number of hours scheduled for next week. apparently, getting hours is something that you have to earn by proving yourself; it's not a god-given right. i've calculated that i can almost pay rent and have enough left over to eat if they give me an average of 20 hours a week, and if i keep tutoring (which pays like, 2.5 times more than babydaycare). thank god i made money over the summer, though, as it's severely helping out my lack of motivation to get a job that would require any commitment.

but anyway. I LOVE WORKING AT BABYDAYCARE. so many sweet little babies. the place i work, which actually has a very professional, corporate-sounding name, (i prefer babydaycare or uBaby), specializes in emergency childcare--so there are some kids who are there every day, but there are other kids who show up only when their normal childcare arrangements fall through, or when schools have holidays that parents don't have, etc. so the majority of the kids are real, bona-fide, babies--like, the diaper-wearing, non-talking kind--but then on days like veterans day (my first full day--trial by fire, oh my), the place is swarming with toddlers and "big kids" as well.

so, two observations on my first day: 1) 6 year olds are at least as angsty as i am, if not more (one kid told me flat-out that she was scared of being rejected; another one cried in my arms about her day being ruined forever by the fact that her best friend was playing with someone else); and 2) board game pieces that are made to look like white children fit nicely into that invisible knapsack of white privilege that peggy mcintosh writes of. that second revelation, plus the fact that the kid i tutor wants to drop out of school because his guidance counselor told him that college was an impossibility for him, makes me really wanna go here right now. and not just because i miss northampton, i promise.

speaking of that place, check this shit out. i can only imagine the number of hours i would have spent reading the jolt, checking the facebook group, and discussing this with my friends if i was still there. oh wait! actually i did all that tonight anyway.

back to babydaycare. on friday, i attempted to change a diaper for the first time since i was twelve. the part i was anxious about--the diaper itself--was easy. the clothes, on the other hand, were more of a challenge. babies apparently need to wear about twenty times more layers than we do--i'm not exactly sure why this is the case, but apparently it is. miranda disputes this, and argues that her present fondness for and ease with the cold comes from the fact that her parents only dressed her in the number of layers they themselves were wearing. this could be true. but anyway, this baby's mother clearly did not see things that way, as her baby had on at least three different pairs of pants. and of course, in putting them back on...i forgot the middle yellow pants. so after i finish changing him (a process which involved a lot of crying on his part and a lot of soothing/apologizing on my part), i bring him back to his little swing up front, and i rock him back and forth and make faces at him. he starts to laugh and is clearly back to his old self and happy to have a clean diaper.

but THEN...oh shit...a fellow staff member comes over to say hi to him and notices somehow that the yellow pants are missing. so, back to the changing table he goes. this time, while undressing him (again amidst crying and apologies), i notice that his bottom pair of pants is kind of wet. i ask one of the other staff members if he has a change of clothes, and she retrieves one for me. so ok, great, except...i have to take off all 500 layers and put 500 new ones back on.

the kid is not having this. he looks at me in bewilderment, and i apologize again for putting him through such pain/incompetence. as soon i have all of this clothes off and i think he's about to smile at me, THE DRYER LOAD FINISHES AND A HUGE BUZZING NOISE GOES OFF REALLY LOUDLY RIGHT NEXT TO HIS HEAD AND KEEPS BUZZING FOR 30 SECONDS AT LEAST. in a very instintive-mothery fashion, i cover his ears with my hands, but it's really fairly pointless, as the thing is like RIGHT IN HIS EARS. he starts screaming, as any rational human with sensitive baby eardrums might do in that situation. i'm like, i am so sorry that we just made you deaf, and i try to hurry up my dressing-him action so we can get back to his little swing.

of course, in the midst of all this screaming, who shows up but...his mom! who has of course never met me and who comes in after a long day at work to find this awkward barely-adult girl trying to push a yellow shirt over her baby's head while he screams and screams. i try to act calm and collected ("look who's here! is that who i think it is? it's your mommy!") but it's clearly a show that's more for the mom than for the baby. the mom hugs him and kisses him and asks what's wrong, and it becomes clear that she's actually talking to me. i try to explain about the diaper and the clothing and the dryer noise, leaving out any mention of forgetting the middle pair of pants (without which this whole incident could have been avoided), and she nods and pretends to understand. however, she quickly takes over the dressing-him process. he continues to scream while she dresses him, which makes me feel better (although that thought makes me feel like a bad person. but, whatever).

so that's one excerpt from my babydaycare job. there are a million more in my head. get excited.

of course, always one to keep me in line, dishes has informed me that for something to actually be considered a "blog" and not a livejournal/xanga, you have to adhere to the definition of "blog," aka, "weblog," which means, a log of things you read on the web. that sounds almost too meta to handle, but i'm trying in this post (you may notice there are more links than ever before. that's not an accident).

i should really go to sleep. vegan potluck tomorrow; we made cupcakes with $9 worth of crystallized ginger.