The problem with this nanny search thing is that we just don't know where to start. We did manage to cobble together an ad and post it on a popular online advertising service, just to see what kind of response we would get, but the e-mails I've received so far are of two varieties.
1.) HELLO I AM WANT TO WORK FOR YOU I AM NICE LADY AND LIKE YOUR BABY I JUST GET OUT OF JAIL AND NEED JOB CALL ME CALL ME!!!
2.) I have been a nanny around the city for 10 years, and I think that the hours that you are expecting your nanny to work and the pay that you are offering is outrageous! I have a college degree! I worked out the number of hours you're asking for and the pay you're offering, and it amounts to about $9 an hour. $9 an hour is slave labor! I hope you stupid, stupid people come to your sense by the time your baby is born, for your own sake and your child's! You are horrible people, and I am insulted and disgusted by your ad! (Sound of spitting.)
To the first type of response: Yeah, lady. Don't call us, we'll call you.
To the second type of response: This one I find a little tricky. Sure, I would love to pay people more, because I think we'd get better candidates that way. But we just don't make all that much money to begin with, and already, we're budgeting that all of one entire person's annual take-home salary is going to be directed towards paying for this person. And yeah, we know the hours are long, but those are the hours we work--as residents, we don't exactly have a lot of flexability with getting out early or staggering our shifts. Shifts? What shifts? Every day, from the crack of dawn to the crack of dusk (does dusk have a crack?), unless one of us is lucky enough to be on call and working 24 hours straight through the night.
In addition, I feel bad that those people were so insulted by our ad, but if it makes them feel better, Joe and I both have medical degrees, and we work even more hours per week for that same pay or less. So now who's the slave? And honestly, if the job is not for you, you really don't have to apply. You don't have to get all nasty in my inbox about it.
Nonetheless, meaness filtered out, the input is taken into advisement. Now hear this: most people would prefer to work fewer hours with less responsibility and more pay. Join the club.
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This weekend, because it was cold and snowy and forbidding outside, I was watching TV (on VH1, they were running an "I Love the 90's" marathon, and the episode I caught was about 1999--there's a nostalgia show about that? That was just, like, last year!) and caught a couple episodes of "The Ashley Simpson Show." Oh, I'm sorry, ASHLEE Simpson. I gues it's phoenetic. I was curious about this show for a couple of reasons, first because I could not figure out why the hell Ashlee Simpson was famous (it's like that Lindsey Lohan phenomenon, except even more senseless), and why people hated her so much now. I am sorry to report that I have no answers to either of those questions.
The "why she's famous" issue is a mystery to many, I'm sure, but from what I can glean, she's the "rebellious" "punk rock" younger sister to some more famous golden-girl pinup type, and therefore that gives her some sort of automatic leg up in the industry, as well a shitload of exposure. Also, she dyed her hair brown and wears a lot of black kohl eyeliner! Instant edginess! (See: Avril Lavigne.) Why people hate her so much I also don't understand. Sure, she's kind of stupid and not terribly talented, but that's just like 95% of the other artists on MTV. So why the venom, New York Post? My guess is because she doesn't have boobs as big as her sister's.
Currently watching: "Mulholland Drive," which I just rented from Blockbusters. We actually watched this in the theater when it first came out, but were totally confused by it, and therefore thought it unbearably obscure and pretentious. But then I kept thinking about the movie obsessively for, like, weeks after we saw it, and read some more reviews that clarified a few things for me. And then I was like, "Oh...now I get it...kinda." So I figure it's worth watching again.
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