I tried various ways to look for a babysitter or stay-at-home mom who could watch Jory. I put the word out to everyone I knew. I looked into the cost for a nanny and discovered they make more money then me. I went to babysitting/nanny websites and discovered those people too make more money than me. But I wasn’t discouraged, I knew somewhere out there was the woman meant to watch Jory.
Earlier this summer, I thought I had found the right woman. The only downside I saw was how to get Jory to her house. Only in LA did a house that was 4.89 miles from my job take 20 to 30 minutes to get to during rush hour. At the end, I trusted God would work out that detail and emailed the woman. She emailed me back and at $700 every two weeks, I unfortunately couldn’t afford to hire her. So back to the drawing board I went. I checked local newspapers, went to the park, the library, grocery stores, looking for anyone who was babysitting and nothing. I went to Craigslist and looked through their childcare section.
I came upon a woman who said she lived near my job. I called her up and made an appointment to see her a few days later. The day of I called when I was leaving work and she told me to park on the side street and not in the liquor store parking lot. I try not to judge, but hearing the words don’t park in the liquor star parking lot sent off warning bells. She said she lived on Melrose near Highland . There’s houses in Melrose I thought, but I followed her directions. I drove slowly on the lookout for her house, I see businesses, but I don’t see a house. I passed a liquor store, so I knew the house had to be close by. I turned at the nearest corner and found a park. Walking around the block, I see a house set back off the street in between two businesses. Since it was on a busy street like Melrose , the yard was tiny, but still I didn’t see an address, but I did see children’s toys on the miniscule porch so I figured I was in the right place.
I knocked and a dark haired woman appearing to be in her 50s with a nice size pink bow on the front of her head answered the door and invited me inside. Two things hit me, a smell I couldn’t identify and the barking of the dog. She told me that the dog stayed in the room because sometimes the dog or the children become too excitable to be around each other.
The daycare provider was a nice woman. She showed me around her place and introduced me to the two children she was currently watching. The children’s playroom wasn’t big, but it was very neat. Then she took me to the yard. I was surprised the house had a yard. When she showed the yard which contained one of those Playskool slides and three feet of walking space, I knew the house didn’t really have a yard to speak of.
We headed back to the living room where I saw a grey cat on the sofa and a black and white one on the desk chair. She has cats. Okay, and a dog. Okay, I’m not an animal lover, but Jory likes Bubbles and other animals and I won’t impose my views on him. I can handle this, I thought.
I noticed a stain on the brown carpet in the living room and she noticed my eye movement. She told me she lived down the road and her landlord was foreclosed on so she only had 60 days to find a new place to live. Keeping all daycare children's parents in mind, she tried to look for a new place in the area. I was touched that with only 60 days to find a new place to live, she kept the needs of her parents in mind. One day on a walk, she found her current place and fell in love. She said it was bigger than her old place. I found that hard to believe. Could some place be smaller than the place she was currently in?
She said she loved hear the traffic all day and her dream would be to live in the middle of Manhattan. I thought if you love traffic and noise at all times of the night, you should move to Saigon, but I didn't share that thought with her. Continuing she informed me, the owner of her new home had put down the brown carpet right before she moved in and was very proud of it so she was hestitant to tell him that brown carpet didn't really fit her lifestyle of a daycare and a zoo.
The woman told me the kids had the run of the house and they took a nap in her bed. Take naps in her bed?!?! Really?!?! Yeah, that’s a whole other level of intimacy that, yeah. I’m not down with that. I told her Jory didn’t take naps, which he doesn’t. We talked schedules and I got the feeling that she didn’t really want me to hire her because she didn’t want to be tied down five days a week. All of her other children were part-time and she took drop-ins so she was happy and obviously made enough money to keep it that way.
As we talked, she mentioned that once she was at work and her roommate called her to tell her that her newly adopted cat just had kittens under her bed. A few days later, she took her male cat to be spayed, but someone forgot to tell her the male cat can still impregnate up to three months after the procedure. So a few months later, her female cat was pregnant once again. She took her cat sadly to the vet and aborted the unborn kittens.
I wondered, why is she telling me this story. Do I have an “I love animals” sign on me? Because I don’t. I don’t like animals, of any kind. Maybe this was her way of making conversation, I wasn’t sure, but as I turned to leave out of the corner of my eye I saw something. Wow, that black and white cat moved quickly from the desk chair, oh wait- - the cat didn’t move, that’s another cat. I turned and saw another cat. One cat, two cats, three cats, four cats. She told me the story because she kept all the kittens her cat had and now they were grown cats. I counted four but there could be more. Four cats and a dog. And the smell I smelled was the house being closed up, I’m sure to keep the house cool, but also it was the smell of possibly five animals maybe more.
Yeah, I can’t do this. Jory can’t do this. She doesn’t want to do this. Score! Win all around. She kindly told me to keep in touch and suggested a few places I could look, then we parted ways.
And the search for the perfect babysitter continues….
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