ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING!!

Yesterday afternoon, I finished working out at around 3pm after putting in another four hour training day and as soon as I got in my car to drive home, I checked my voicemail. I had two messages from my best girlfriend/business partner Peggy telling me that her babysitter had cancelled on her at the last minute and she really needed me to watch her two kids for about 3hrs so she could go to her first class for this semester. She's in design school. So by the time I got home, her and the kids, Xolani, 5 and Xander, 3 (pronounced Zolani and Zander) were there waiting from me. Now let's remember that had I just finished working out for 4 hours so I was more than a little bit tired, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do!


Peggy rushed off and all I can say after that is Lord have mercy! Just for the record, even though Peggy is my best friend, I think I have only watched her kids on a couple of occasions prior largely due to the fact that she lives about 40 mins away from me so I'm not a convenient option:) The kids started me out slowly. Peggy had bought them something to eat so they were busy for the first 15 -20 mins. After that, it starts to get a little foggy for me.

Once they figured out that I have a loft, and that they could throw things over and down into the living room, that was it!! They shredded paper, and "made it snow", they threw over throw pillows, paper airplanes that they made and some seat cushions. I think they might have run up and down the stairs over 20 or 30 times - I lost count. Who knew that one thing could be that entertaining?!

Then they found the switch to this cool lamp that I have and they began switching that thing off and on and off and on and off and on and...you get the picture! They jumped over the back of the couch and onto the cushions, they continued to eat intermittently, dropped food, spilled water... You know at first I was trying to keep everything in order - stop, don't do that, do this, sit here, go over there...and slowly I just began to look the other way, as long as there was no fear of them hurting themselves. I even reached the point where I took them to the park across the street just so that some more time would pass. That took up a good 40 minutes. At some point, I had to resort to the failsafe bribery method of promising candy in the event of good behavior.

I am usually pretty meticulous about keeping everything neat and tidy. Suffice to say, by the time Peggy came, my apartment looked like a storm had passed through...and I could care less! As they gathered their things, Peggy and I cleaned up, and I gave them hugs, said goodbye and gave them the candycanes that they had "earned".

I finally got to take a shower and felt a small sense of relief that no one got hurt and that nothing got broken. Somewhere right around 10pm I started to feel sleepy. For those of you that go to bed early, this might not seem odd, but for someone like me who usually goes to bed at around 1am, this kinda caught me off guard. I tried fighting it for about an hour, but I finally decided to just give in. I laid it down and if this had been a 10 round boxing match and we were to check the scorecards, I would say - Kids, 9 - Jackie, 1! I give myself 1 point just because I survived.

To all you parents out there, I have no idea how you do it. Nevertheless, in spite of it all, if and when Peggy comes a calling, I'll be there to wage the battle again..