Did you know that McEwan’s Scotch ale has a higher alcohol content than normal beer? Yes indeed! Did you know that if you drink a couple of them on an empty stomach, you’re pretty much done in? Yes indeed! Did you know that I could type grammatically correct sentences after more than a couple McEwan’s Scotch Ales? Neither did I!

Thank you for, as always, being the kind and decent people that you are and for saying that you wish you could help. I’m passing a babysitting sign-up sheet around; feel free to put your name down as many times as you like! Okay, just joking. But I do appreciate all the supportive and constructive comments and e-mails. You all are the best. Martinis for everyone!

I’m feeling a little less . . . pointless today (and a lot more sober) despite the fact that things have gone from bad to OH MY GOD WHAT DO WE DO NOW??? But yes, you all are right: I need to hire some help, and soon. And all appearances of late to the contrary, I’m not just wallowing in pointless self-pity and McEwan’s Scotch Ale, I’m working on it, I really am. In fact, I’m working even harder to find a sitter as my whole already tenuous chidcare system pretty much spontaneously combusted this afternoon. Yes, really!

See, I had been using school as my childcare, which makes a lot of sense with school-aged children, right? Charlie goes to Mother’s Day Out (okay, not really school, but whatever) all day Mondays and Thursdays; Henry had been going to preschool all day on Mondays and Wednesdays and half days the rest of the week.

Please notice that I said HAD BEEN going.

Before spring break, we started to get some indications that the long day on Wednesday wasn’t working out, for Henry or his teachers. Wade and I talked about it and decided that it was in everyone’s best interest to pull Henry out of the afternoon program. So we did.

Then we had to stop the medication.

Then the speech path had an opening, on Wednesday mornings, so we took him out of school for the whole day.

Then, on Monday, he had to come home at lunch time. And this afternoon I talked to the director, who suggested (very nicely, but in a way that left me no room to disagree) that we take Henry out of the Monday afternoon program, and that we rearrange his morning schedule so that the same teacher doesn’t have him two days in a row, which means that he will be going to school three mornings a week, most likely Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. So starting next week I will be down to two and a half hours without kids. Each week. All week.

We may not have any clean laundry around here soon.

But there’s more! Last summer I was childcare free, by choice, and while it was fine, I wasn’t going to do it again this summer. My plan was to send both boys to the church where Charlie goes to Mother’s Day Out. Typically, in the summer, they have Day Out for the smaller kids and summer camp for the bigger kids. It’s a small program and a place Henry is familiar with, and the director (who was Henry’s teacher when he was there) has a background in special education. It would have been perfect.

Except that they are remodeling the church this summer and will have Day Out ONLY for the little kids. No summer camp.

Wade and I talked about the possibility of signing Charlie up for Day Out there and sending Henry . . . somewhere else. Or sending both kids somewhere else. But the bottom line is this: I can’t spend the ENTIRE summer picking Henry up early from summer camp because he’s not able to do what the other kids are doing. Or even worrying about it.

So I’m looking for a sitter, to come once a week starting the week after next and twice a week this summer. I have some good leads and I know that I will find someone and it will be worth every dime, if only because I can pretty much guarantee that a sitter can deal with Henry for three or four hours and will not need to call me to come get him early.

But there is also this: for the next few weeks, Charlie will keep going to my friend Christa’s house on Wednesday mornings, to say with her sitter while I take H to speech therapy. This solves my short-term sitter problem, but soon I will have a different predicament: the sitter I get two days a week this summer will need to cover when I take Henry to speech therapy and to whatever other therapies the new doctor recommends. So my actual time away from the kids gets smaller and smaller, and Charlie’s time with the sitter gets longer and longer.

And yes, I thought about putting Charlie in Day Out just so he would have some friends to play with, but then I don’t have any flexibility, and the thing with doctors is that you go when they have an appointment. If Charlie was in Day Out, I would most likely STILL need the sitter. And then I would NEVER see Charlie.

While I am sorting out all of these logistics, I’m trying very very hard NOT to think about the whole issue of fairness–Charlie is acutely aware of how much time he gets with me and with Wade; I know this because he will talk about it. Today on the way to school, he said, “Next year I want to go to school some long days and some short days, like Henry does. So I can come home and play with you, by myself.”

I think my heart broke a little when he said that.

Tonight Charlie was getting his pyjamas on; they are so old and worn that they have a hole in the knee and he put his foot right through it. “Hey!” he said, indignant. “Look at my FOOT!” I started to laugh at his poor baby toes sticking out through the fabric and he said, “Don’t laugh at me!” and then he started to laugh, too.

“I’m not laughing AT you, I’m laughing WITH you,” I said.

“But I am NOT LAUGHING,” he said seriously. But really he was.

Today I am feeling better, if only because this is probably as bad as it will get. This week, anyway. I still don’t really have a point, or a plan, or any sort of coherent ending to this post. So okay! Tune in tomorrow to see–oh, I have no idea what you will see. Charlie with his foot through the knee of his pyjamas or Henry watching television with his feet on the sofa and his head on the floor or . . .

You can’t wait, can you?