Eeeeelectricity.

We got it back in our house, but it's missing other places. A small percentage of New Yorkers are still without it in their homes.

And I seem to have none with my new "coworker."

I was just sitting down today to try to figure out a way to post my blogs to Facebook without the new nanny seeing them. You see, we spent last weekend cooped up in T's mom's house together and the Lord tested my patience with people I dislike.

I was able to be courteous and sweet-ish. I was able to make small talk and smile. Then our house was cleared for us to come back and I was the first one to run out the door to the car yelling, "I'll clean it! I'll clean the whole thing! Please! Let's just go!"

New Nanny friended me on Facebook over the weekend. It was one night when all the parents of our kiddos were out and we were sitting in the only sitting room in that house and I had my little baby snuggled on my arm and she was talking, which makes my ears bleed.

Stop.

I'm being too mean.

Quick, say three nice things.

She's developed a good relationship with her kids, even if I don't understand how.

She has clean hair.

She is a pretty decent dresser.

Ok, so, talking, waiting the night out, poor girl has been without power for nearly half the time that she has lived here... Me, trying to find a way out of the conversation so I could go to bed.

She sent me a friend request from the other side of the room, while I was holding my phone and clearly using Facebook. I had to accept.

I have a policy about not being friends with people on Facebook while I am working with/for them. I have made exceptions in the past, but I find that it is all around healthier to keep cyber-friendships limited to when I am not actually working with/for the people I tend to mention most.

I don't often say bad things about people on Facebook.

I'm not one of those girls (teenagers) who gripes about people who have "wronged" me or irritated me that day. Aside from the kids, I try not to mention any people (except my siblings) in a negative way online, at all. But I am not friends with my boss on FB, and I love her. I try to wait until after I am not working with people anymore, and then we can be online friends. It's just a matter of privacy, which, like I said, I have made exceptions for in the past.

That all being poorly said, trying to explain that to someone I genuinely don't like seemed like too big a cop out, so I accepted. I spent the next ten minutes taking down links to my blog, which, no matter how anonymous, would clearly explain to New Nanny how I feel about her.

I took down the links, stalked her a little and went to bed.

In the morning T asked me how the night went. Knowing and sharing my aversion to New Nanny, she specifically asked about that part of the weekend.

BIG SIGH.

I explained.

Only slightly better than I just did for you.

So, Sunday we were clear to go back into our house and clean it. Monday T's sister got power back and they all went home. Monday afternoon, T's mom let everyone know how tired she was from hosting them and went off the grid for a while. That lady is such a beautiful person. I love her.

Monday afternoon, T's sister had a conversation with her new nanny about something that could have only come from me; something I had seen on her FB page that was inappropriate and T had then seen for herself in our following conversation. I don't know how it went, only that New Nanny's response was to unfriend me.

Haha.

So, I no longer need to hem and haw about how to hide this blog from her.

But I did get a little perspective.

I did not do a good enough job being the light and the salt this weekend.

And I may have been too harsh here, taking anonymity a bit too far by using a public forum as my personal ventilation system. There's always a slim chance that someone I don't expect to read this blog might read it. I need to bite my tongue, or fingers or whatever.

And maybe I should have said something to New Nanny about the scores and scores of photos of the kids and their house, and the insides of their house, and the in-depth descriptions of the layout of the house and the kids real names all being on FB. I could have saved her an awkward conversation with her boss, but I still don't know if that would have been my place. I wasn't even going to say anything to anyone, but T's mind seems to be in sync with mine so she right away asked about photos on FB.

But it blows my mind a little that this needs to be addressed. This girl has no discretion at all. Remember when she met someone online in her first two weeks and invited them over to the house? Did I tell you about that?

It happened.

You just don't use the Internet so freely and casually. It's not smart. It's not safe.

I don't know how I should have handled my part, I just know I didn't do it right.

Another, less worrisome sigh.

 I have my privacy back.

And I think I will stick to my guns about that rule from now on.

Another thing I am going to be more stubborn about: listening to T's mom.

I do love her and she's so nice and so helpful and so giving, but sometimes her way of doing things really screws up my day.

She likes to give the kids little treats all the time, which is her rite as Grandma, BUT when we were there for the entire weekend the sugar high started to get to me. If the kids are bouncing around a room full of crystal, the solution is not Oreos. It's tranquilizing darts.

And when I am freshly showered and clean and dry, the best way to bathe J is in the tub, not in the shower with the door hanging open while I lean in and he screams about not wanting to take a shower. He wanted a bath, I wanted to give him a bath; I should have listened to myself that time.

But it was after the whole New Nanny fiasco and I was second-guessing myself about everything.

Anyway, we're home again.

Monday, the most wonderful cleaning lady in the world came over and helped start really cleaning the basement. I had the kids, so I didn't do anything except try to keep my sanity.

Tuesday, I was able to do laundry. I washed all the sheets and towels and cleaned the kids' rooms of the final layer of dust and soot. I opened all the windows and aired out the whole house, which is good, because a couple hours later the baby was diagnosed with croup and his prescription is fresh air.

Later Tuesday night, after a full day of following the contractor and his man around to make sure they painted the entire wall this time, E fired the contractor. This team was truly awful.

They painted only the worst parts of the walls and tried to blend it in. They installed two new outlets that don't work. They didn't sand the walls but put up the baseboard and there are very visible gaps in it. They damaged the new floor. All this in addition to already having damaged the counter tops, installing a new door that doesn't close properly, and doing severe damage to one wall and never fixing it.

Enough was enough. The bulk of the work was done, clearly details are not their forte, so E let them go.

We spent the night cleaning up the dust in the kitchen and carrying things back into the room to make it usable again. The foyer feels enormous without that table in it. And I have never been happier to see this stove, which I loathe. The new one has not been settled on and ordered yet.

The dishwasher has seventeen jets, T wanted me to say that.

The fridge comes a week from today.

My room is clean and functional and I began putting my things back into it last night.

I sprayed a silverfish to death with bleach on the far side of the basement before going to bed.

I made a shopping list for today and planned the last of my Christmas shopping.

It was an all-around productive night that didn't end until nearly one AM.

I heard the kids discover the kitchen this morning. They were wild with excitement. I laughed because they were happy, and also because I didn't have to deal with them, and then I went back to sleep.

I don't mean to brag...

But yes I do.

I had the best weekend with the best family ever.

Before that, we made it through the hurricane. Construction on our kitchen had halted for the weekend anyway and then the rain started on Monday or something. I don't know; it's all fuzzy now.

Anyway, we didn't lose power until later in the day, but we had already been using coolers in place of a refrigerator so all we really lose was light and heat.

We watched the wind and the rain for a while and then E filled the generator with gas and we cranked on the TV to pass the night. I would never deny that we are incredibly spoiled and blessed.

We had our trial in the form of hosting the extended family for the next few days.

On Tuesday, the mothers starting bringing over their food before it could spoil. By Tuesday afternoon, T's mom had cooked a feast and her sister had shown up with her kids and horrible nanny.

It is rare that I don't like someone, like, really, really don't like someone, but I don't like this girl and I need your prayers for staying on track as a Christian and being nice. Or at least polite. Some of you think I am nice naturally, but that's just not true.

No, really.

Anyway, on Wednesday the kids were getting tired of playing inside so T's sister took them off to a magic show. I was working, because I had the entire weekend off, so I spent the morning cleaning our floors, which had turned black once again from the soot lingering in the entire house from the work in the kitchen. By late morning, I was free for the day, to hang out with little baby D.

Unfortunately for me, T's sister had dropped off New Nanny with me.

Lazy Nanny had twisted her ankle on the stairs and was laid up for the afternoon. LAME. She spent the day sitting on our couch and being useless. At one point she asked me for food and after smothering all the completely rude and curse-word laden responses that popped into my head, I just told her food was in the dining room and ran away.

She also kept asking to hold the baby, who hates her and screamed horribly every time she did. I had to take him several times and calm him.

FINALLY, the rest of the family started to come in and I was relieved of my duty of entertaining Big Whiny Crybaby Nanny. E and T were just as fed up with New Nanny was I was and they couldn't believe Sister Dearest had dumped her on my all afternoon, electricity or not. Sister's reason was that their house was cold.

Boo hoo.

I promised T that if I ever "twist" my ankle on the job, during a week of crisis and a blackout, I will not need to go anywhere and I will probably keep working. Twisted ankles are not crippling injuries.

Anyway, we got through another massive family dinner and then shortly after it was over, the generator crapped out and the kids went nuts. I lit some tea light way up high on the mantel and T's sister started following me around telling me how dangerous candles are. I pretended to be deaf, because frankly in that moment I was losing my marbles and I really like my marbles.

Most of them are sparkly and primarily purple and I use them almost every day.

Anyway again, at the end of the night, E insisted that we did not need them to come back on Thursday. No one needed to come cook, no one was allowed to come use our house for leisure to "heal" from an "injury" and he politely asked T's sister to keep her three unruly children to herself.

Some lucky people in King's Point got their power back, so we didn't feel too guilty on Thursday because they had power or other places to go. We had a nice day.

Thursday night and Friday morning I tried really hard to pack for the weekend. I really did. I took a flashlight down to the basement and looked at my clothes and shoes and tried to put outfits together, but all I managed to do was grab an armful of clothes that I hoped could go together and run back upstairs.

Somehow, I got it together and did some work around the house to set T up for a peaceful weekend.

My sister, my youngest sister, turned 21 on Tuesday. On Friday she was coming into the city from Boston where she had been trapped for the storm and the days following while the buses were shut down. She didn't mind.

She got into town right on time and then agreed to take the train out to Great Neck because my kids were dying to see her. She got into the train station in a timely manner and then I called her a cab. She stood there forEVER and no cab came, so I finally asked E, who was making a run to his mother's house, to pick Hannah up on the way back.

They had a really hard time finding each other, probably because they both possess the communication skills of rocks and the common sense of, well, men.

She made it to the house at long last and the kids were all over her. J is a little bit in love with her and it's so fun to watch because he didn't even know what to do with himself.

When it was time for us to go catch our train, for some reason only me and T got up and tried to get going. E was driving us to the station since the taxis were MIA, but he had disappeared upstairs and Hannah was having trouble standing up and breaking free of the kids. We got out the door with five minutes until our train.

Miraculously, we made it.

Friday night, Hannah and my sister Brianne and I celebrated Hannah's birthday until we couldn't celebrate anymore. We went home giggling and cackling  (the cackling is mostly me but it is a family trait) and then spent Saturday morning sleeping in recovery.

My mom PROMISED us French toast and then didn't even make it because she is a mean, mean lady, but she did make us grilled cheese and soup, so I guess I take back one of those 'mean's.

My brother and his family arrived for the weekend and another of my brothers and his family came for the day and after the kids went trick-or-treating (which as we all know is really just treating in this day and age because the trick part is pretty illegal and frowned upon) the ladies went to the spa.

It. Was. Lovely.

Manicures and pedicures and a general good time were had by all and then Mom made everyone dinner and we played games until bed time.

On Sunday, I was Baptist for several reasons, not least of which because there is no gas anywhere right now and we couldn't justify using Mom's to drive into Hackettstown even though I miss my church family there sooooooo much.

So, stayed local and heard a PCA pastor preach at a Baptist church and it all made my heart happy.

Less happy, was riding the slowest bus in the universe home to New York and then waiting an hour in Penn Station because I juuuuuuust missed the 6 o'clock hour train and had to wait for the seven something.

I got home at eight something, to ride in a cab, whose company seems to have recovered, through a dark and creepy town which still has no power.

As per usual, our generator was running, no lights were on and the TV was on.

I chatted with E and T for a long time before I dared open my suitcase and try to get settled in the playroom once more.

I guess you could call what I am now settled because my clothes are all over the room again and I no longer know which ones are clean and which ones are not technically clean but I will surely wear again.

Tomorrow, the floor people for the kitchen floor and hopefully they won't blow our generator.

Hopefully.