You can call me Gigi (in about 30 years)

Hear ye, hear ye and let it be known henceforth for the undetermined future: I'm back in the teaching mode, so my blogginess is probably going to chillax a little.  (I like to keep the words fresh even though I'm not working it high school style anymore.  Note: I'm on the lookout for someone new to be my fashion maven given that I won't have total access to teenage girls anymore to rescue and guide me.)  I'm adjuncting it up over here, which is still qu-ite a bit o' the gradin' despite a one-meeting-a-week schedule.  And, you know, my day job still likes attention.  A lot. 

Public service announcements over, here's the nuts leading  up to the bolts of this here post.  Nuts: I'm babysitting again.  Remember Maggie? 

(Oh look...those are also my kids.  And me.)

She's the giver of my Maggie squeezes and quite the peanut.  She's our favorite 2-year old friend who comes and hangs at our place for lunch, naps and playtime a few days a week.   I'm good with this arrangement, though admittedly a part of me doesn'twanttobeababysitterdangitandwhyohwhyamIdoingthisatthispointinmylife, you know?  But I volunteered to help some friends out, and the arrangement works.  Well, I have lots of teacher friends, it turns out.  And they're all kind of returning to work right around now, ironically (not really).  And some of them have their own child/ren (really...do tell).  And one of them is in a babysitting bind right now since her district started today (yup) and her sitter's school district is still 2 weeks away from starting (which is some semblance of normalcy).  Thus, a phone call and the question "Hey, could you watch..." and me saying "Yeah, sure..."  I'm done with this whole babysitting gig.  It not what I signed up for when I (exaggeration about to ensue cause we all know it wasn't me) was forking over $20,000+/year in tuition and room/board for a pricey private school.  

And now the bolts that stemmed from these nuts.  I'm totally cool with other people's young kids.  I dig 'em, usually-sometimes (depending on the day and maybe the hour of said day).  Don't be misrepresenting me here, cause I'm not saying that I don't like kids.  I do.  Within reason.  As in, I could never and will never be a full-time babysitter/daycare worker and MAY BLESSINGS RAIN UPON THEM THAT ARE AND ARE GOOD AT IT!  I also think that those who are truly devoted to this and enjoy it are supernatural beings of whom I cannot even begin to understand.  Case in point, my day today was spent with a very, very weepy (and otherwise non-communicative) almost 2-year old as well as my own little tod(dler).  I repeatedly wondered something along the lines of "Are there really people who do this for a living and enjoy it?"  A toddler whisperer, I am not.  (Frankly, look at my oldest and that should be pretty evident.  Oh, but she's a precocious little bugger sometimes.)

But I also think that I'm going to be one of those grandmammies who will be all into her own grandchildren (please, oh please let them all be girls because boys scare me to the very core of my being...I kid you not).  And I have already decided that I want to be Gigi when that day (in at least 30, hopefully 35 years) comes.  I'm not feeling "Grandma" or "Nana" and definitely not "Granny."  And for my tastes, "Nonna" feels too Italian, which I can't pass for even in shadows.  But I can be a "Gigi."  It's actually the title that Maggie's Great-Grandma has adopted for herself (get it...G. G. for Great-Grandma?  I admit, it took me a few hearings to figure this one out.)  The only foreseeable trouble is that I'll have to cross-stich that "Gigi's little angels" sweatshirt on my own, cause that one won't be found in stores.