Stinkerbell-vs-MLTL

For 23 of the past 25 years, I've managed to work a lot of weekends and holidays. A schedule like this is the bane of any nurse's existence. It's just the way it is as the sick don't keep to a normal 9-5 schedule like the rest of the world. My husband had every single weekend and holiday off. Now the tables have turned and I work only one holiday a year (one of my choosing), and no weekends, and he works most weekends and almost every holiday. It would seem that airline travelers don't take breaks on those special days, either.

This leaves me in the position of flying solo when having to care for both my daughter, and worse, MLTL, on these days. It really does take a village, but it would seem the village has a tendency to disappear at these times.

At noon on Easter, my son picked up his sister and brought the ham over at the same time. He promised to stay and help out while I cooked and promptly fell asleep on the sofa. Since he's carrying 18 credits and working part time, I took pity and didn't terrorize him while he slept. Rachel immediately saw the advantage in this relative lack of supervision. Three times, I had to sweep the floor of crumbs and spit wads of paper. Don't worry, she didn't chew any books or DVDs. Instead, it was a few brochures she found tucked inside the DVD cases, bits of tortilla chips and Syrian bread crumbs.

At around 4 PM, my son went to fetch Mr. Larger Than Life. After much fuss over the small amount of artichoke salad he brought as a "house warming gift" and the beauty of the ham he had purchased for himself (everyone else ate grape leaves), he shuffled into the living room and sat with a bored look on his face. He wasn't into watching Winnie the Pooh with Rachel on the only babysitter television in the house, so my son gave him my husband's laptop. A Dell. Windows. This isn't what the man is accustomed to using. He's used to my son's laptop. A Macbook. After a bit of fuss, my son gave him my laptop to use. One he's familiar with.

Or so I thought.

Sunday night, when everyone left and I'd mopped Rachel's paths around the house by following the crumbs and bits of paper for the fourth time that day, and sterilized my tooth brush I caught her using, I sat down to upload the photos and write the grape leaf tutorial, watch The Pacific and surf my favorite sites. It was late when I noticed that someone had managed to delete all of my bookmarks.

All of them.

Perhaps it's time to go back to working the holidays for a break. It's certainly less work.