| wherein i'm on the dole with the bluebloods |
Hi everyone.
Sorry I've been so out of touch lately. It's just that I've been in an area of the world somewhat devoid of most normal methods of communication. Remember how I'm a nanny sometimes? Well the family that I nanny for has a beautiful summer home in a very exclusive area of a part of our country that shall remain nameless, but it rhymes with Bartha's Pinyard. So that's where I am.
I mostly have nothing about which to complain here. The family treats me so well, and they provide me with a gorgeous private room and bedroom (they also offered me the guest house, but I chose this because I wasn't sure of the internet situation in the guest house, plus the food's here, so... done and done), the hours are totally reasonable, they're kind to me, and they give me a car for my very own personal use when I'm not working, plus they have a private beach. I really do care for the kids, and I get to have a lot of unique, celebrity-studded experiences. I won't go into detail but trust me- they're really interestingly connected people.
So for the fourth of July, to celebrate our country's birthday, the family went to a barbecue at a Celebrity's house, and they took me along. They usually do this because that way I can entertain the kids while they're schmoozing, and if one kid wants to sit and eat and the other one wants to swing in the hammock or eat bugs, then everyone can pursue their own diverse interests, you know? Right.
So the little boy, who is five, wanted to sit on his dad's lap right in the middle of the social hullabaloo and eat cheese. And the little girl, who is three, wanted to sit on my lap off to the side and drink Capri Sun. Or as she calls it, bag juice. She also wanted to talk about everyone who was walking by, and pet all the dogs. As you might be able to guess, she and I get along swimmingly.
This house was enormous, as one might expect. There was the regular old huge house part that had a giant lawn and backed up into the private beach, and then there was a little covered walkway leading to a guest house the size of my elementary school.
The little girl, who I will call Lily, and I noticed that a lot of people were coming and going through these double doors of the guest house. She peeked inside and saw a long hallway with a lot of doors.
"Meg, meggy, megmeg," she said, running up to me. "What in dere?" (Just so you know, both kids have an Elmer Fudd-style speech impediment.)
"I don't know. It's (Celebrity)'s guest house. I think his friends sleep there."
"I got good idea. Lets go in! Let's look at da wooms! Dat a good idea, wight?"
"Hm. I don't know. Do you mean snooping?"
"Oh, it not snooping! It...it PEEKing!"
Truth be told, I was pretty danged curious about what was in there my own self. It looked awesome. The house was laid out somewhat panopticon-like, with hallways slithering off in every direction, angling somewhat downward. I mean, at the very least, maybe we'd find something incriminating, like Boil Cream in a bathroom or something. When else was I going to get to do this kind of poking around a celebrity's house?
"Okay. Well. Let's see. I bet we can go in there, but we'll have to be tricky."
She pressed her face to mine and whispered conspiratorially "Meg. I good at twicks. I weawy, weawy good."
"Lilly, I'm up for it if you are. But, here's what we'll have to do. We'll have to pretend to be looking for the bathroom."
She pulled away from me and crossed her tiny arms over her chest, which is what she does when she's super pissed. "I. DO. NOT. HAF. TO. GO. POTTTTEEEEE!"
"Lilly! Calm yourself. I KNOW you don't have to go. But we'll PRETEND that you have to go, and then if we get caught snooping, we just say 'oh! we were just looking for the bathroom! exCUUUUSE us!' " And then I winked at her. I'm trying to make the kids proficient winkers. I'm achieving mediocrity so far.
Lilly covered one eye and blinked, which is her wink. FOR RIGHT NOW. We are in training.
"We pweTEND I have to potty, wight? We pweTEND!"
"Exactly. Now, let's go."
I stood up and took her hand as we headed for the door. She was pulling back a little bit, but I assumed that meant I was going too quickly so I slowed my pace. Apparently, though, it just meant that Lilly thought we weren't creating enough of an illusion of potty-needing. She decided to up the stakes.
"OHHHHH, my PEE PEE is COMIN OUUUUUT!" she moaned dramatically, still stabbing herself in one eye in order to wink at me.
"Lilly," I started.
"OHHH, I NEED A POTTTYYYYYYY! I NEED ONE! FIND A POTTY!" she continued, at top three year old volume, which can be fairly piercing, if not resonous.
"Lilly!" I whispered. "You don't have to do that!"
As I leaned down to scoop her into my arms, she yelled "MY PEE PEE IS OUT! IT IS OUT OF MY GAGINA! MY GAGINA IS IN TWOUBOHHH (trouble)!!!!!!"
Well, I just lost it. I never thought I would meet another person who had a stealth deficit as great as mine, but Lilly certainly surprised me. I had been mid- squat to grab her when she dropped that bomb about her gagina (which is how she says vagina, if you couldn't crack her code), and how her gagina is in trouble, and I laughed so hard I just sat down on the ground, and she plopped herself right in my lap, also breaking character. We were both in stitches and probably looked crazy as all get out. Finally, we pulled it together and I wiped my eyes and said "Woo! Oh my stars," as I try not to swear much around the children.
"Where 'tars?" she asked, staring up at the sky. "Till daytime, Meggy. Till daytime. No 'tars." She folded her arms again, frowning intensely at me, and then cracked up. "Wemder (remember) my gagina? You laugh SO MUCH at my gagina." In case you are wondering, gagina is pronounced with a hard G at the beginning. Guh-JYE-nuh.
"Let's keep that between us. Come on! You were doing a good job with your tricky pretending. Let's go explore."
"Okay! Let's go!"
I picked her up again and we opened the door to the guest house. When I closed it behind us, all the noise of the party was immediately silenced. Soundproof. Nice work, Celebrity. I'm sure your guests sleep in total comfort.
Lilly and I held hands and tiptoed down the hall. We got to the first door which was cracked slightly. "Iss open!" Lilly said, in the worst stage-whisper ever.
"I know," I whispered back.
"What in dere!?"
"No idea."
She poked one wee finger in there, and I had visions of the door slamming closed and her finger being severed and me throwing up and it was all awful, so I nudged her out of the way.
"Watch," I said. Then I did a big fake tumble and bumped the door open with my hip. We crept inside.
Boring. Guest bedroom.
We moved on to the next room, which was slightly more interesting- seemed to be some sort of awkward trophy room. Lilly was unimpressed, so she directed us to the first room on the left, which turned out to be a bathroom.
"Hayup! Hayup! (Help) Meg! I got to pee! Hayup!" she turned to me and started running in place, reaching her arms up high and looking panicked.
"Wait, really? You do? That's not part of the act?"
"Nooo! Hurry!"
"I'm on it!" I grabbed her under the arms and bounded across the bathroom. I plopped her down on the toilet just in time.
After our bathroom emergency was taken care of, hands were washed, and everyone was presentable, we turned to leave the bathroom. I tugged on the door. Stuck. I checked the lock to make sure I hadn't locked us in, and no- everything was free and clear. I pulled again. Nothing. I let go of Lilly's hand and braced myself against the door, pulling with all my might.
Nothing.
We were officially trapped in the bathroom of Celebrity's soundproof guest house.
Lilly looked at me wide-eyed. "What did you do?"
"Me? I was just trying to give you some privacy when you wanted to pee. I didn't DO anything."
"We stuck. I'm telling Mommy."
"If we could tell her, we wouldn't be stuck anymore."
"Oh."
We both thought about it.
"Want me twy?" Lilly said.
"Yeah, go ahead, Bruiser."
She tugged and twisted futilely, even though some small scared part of me thought "Christ, she's going to get it and I couldn't and then she's going to tell EVERYONE" but that didn't happen. I briefly entertained the thought of lowering her down from the window with "SEND HELP" scrawled on her back in shaving cream, but she'd just rub it off or jump in the pool or something. She's unreliable that way.
I put my hands on my hips and pondered the situation while Lilly combed her bangs with a brush she'd found next to the sink. I was picturing us having to call for help until our voices were raw and then I'd get fired for trapping myself in the bathroom with a 3 year old when I heard voices outside the door.
Lilly and I froze.
"Who dat?" she whispered, rubbing pilfered lotion on her face.
"I don't know."
More rumblings outside the door. "This piece of shit is jammed," said a gruff voice.
"How do you know that there isn't someone in there?" said another voice.
"The door isn't shut all the way," said the first.
Much heaving ensued. I picked Lilly up and held her on my hip. For some reason we were both acting like we'd gotten caught doing something wrong, and other than nosing through a medicine cabinet or two, we were pretty guilt-free. Nevertheless, she was huddled close to me and I was breathing rapidly, trying to will my heart to slow down.
"What we do next?" whispered Lilly.
"I'm not sure. We'll think of something."
We waited, huddled together for another five seconds before the door flew open, having been muscled out of the way by a large, drunk, sweaty Celebrity hanger-on.
He stared at us.
We stared at him.
"SURPRISE!" I shouted.
"BOO!" screamed Lilly.
And we fled.Labels: babies |
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| 26 Comments: |
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Oh, I love that entire story.
For some reason, this cracked me up even more than the gagina:
Lilly covered one eye and blinked, which is her wink. FOR RIGHT NOW. We are in training.
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So...in other words, it was a Surprise Potty?
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Why can't you be MY girl, you pretty, funny, charming girl?
Mr. Lament
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You have the best stories. EVER.
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Sounds like you and Mini-Meg had a lovely time. You're an absolute goon, me dear.
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I think maybe you've rubbed off on young Lily, Meg Meggy MegMeg.
Awesome story. I am heretofor going to refer to my vagina as my gagina.
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peter- to me, nothing is funnier than gagina. but yeah, the wink is pretty f-ing cute.
Linus- how DO you do it?
Mr Lament- because you've never asked!
Yvo- They come at a price, let me tell you that.
TK- We did have fun. We always do. I have to assume her money will class her up somewhat though.
Mindy- I'm trying to introduce it into the lexicon as well.
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The hilarity of your stories makes up for their infrequency (is that even a word???)!!!!
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the GAGINA part had me DYING in my work cubicle. DY.ING.
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Way to go not passing out from anxiety over being trapped. That's what I would've done.
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you know she's going to use that line about her gagina being in twouboh again in about, um, 12 years?
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To tears, you brought me! I also spent a summer in Bartha's Pinyard serving the more fortunate. They were, to a man (and woman, I guess), miserable, overeating therapy junkies. But I sure loved the Volvo they gave me to drive. And the beach, tennis court, boat and pool. And especially the charge account at the grocery store, useful for procuring lobsters for my guests on the weekends they were too bored of their own house to fly up from Teeterboro and went to the Hamptons instead. No kids for me, they make me itch. I just cleaned.
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Hi, mama. I'm sure my program director is a little confused about what is so funny about his teachings on Social Intelligence. Probably I won't share the gagina story. Also, the 'my stars' reminded me of telling Squirrely to 'hold your horses'. She looked at me like I was the biggest idiot because there were surely no horses around for her to hold. Little Squirrely.
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hahah. oh this story was perfect.
as they all are.
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Curl- I know, I'm the least consistent blogger ever. I'm trying to reform, but leaving the country for weeks on end won't help much, i suspect. Glad you liked the tale, though!
Deutlich- I know. It is never not funny to me.
HS- I've tried fainting- it never gets me anywhere.
Mrs TK- First of all, the fact that you commented on my blog just made my whole summer. Second of all, I should not be surprised that we are kindred spirits in our history of employment as a domestic. I know, rich people have a magical life. It is so strange to me.
D- MAMA. Toddlers are SO self-righteous, are they not? Miss you so much.
WIB- YOU are perfect
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People are staring at me at work. That's how hard this made me laugh!
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I've been stalking your blog for some time now and had to comment. I wanted to thank you for backing up a long running joke between me and my fiance. I grew up poor and he grew up in a rich Chicago suburb where he frequently drank Capri Sun, which I call "Rich Kid drinks." So, the fact that you nanny for kids who drink Capri Sun while on vacation in Bartha's Pinyard only further illustrates my point! So thanks!:)
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IW- I know how you feel. People stare at me all the time.
Neeneree- TOTALLY rich kid drinks. Growing up we got water, or if we were lucky, Hi C Ecto Cooler. But never at my house. Only Billy MacInroter's. And only on his birthday.
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ah hah haa! I love three year olds. Awesome.
But I hate Bartha's Pineyard. I used to live in the town you get there from, which is a very nice town in all parts of the year except summer when everyone and their mom becomes obsessed with going out to BP. BP: nice if you're disgustingly rich and have a house there, or are working at a house of those disgustingly rich people. If you're just a regular schlub, it's overrated. You aren't going to run into Celebrities. They have private beaches.
Am I the only one who is dying to know who Celebrity in the story is?? Or just the only one gullible enough to think Meg might give us a hint or two? Heh.
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Oh Meg. You are my favorite.
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I am pretty much in love with this whole damn post.
Calling Capri Sun "bag juice" made me snort coffee out my nose. Which was unpleasant, but also hilarious.
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keight- agreed. going as the help is the only way to go. if you go as you, you have to spend your own money and that's just infuriating.
Jamelah- you are too kind.
Joy- I wish i could take credit for Bag Juice. She's so funny. She should have a blog. I'll suggest it to her mother.
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Blogger, this is freaking hilarious, I'm laughing my ass off. :)
Did you, by any chance, every get to meet Michael Pitt?
Just asking...
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oh wow adorable AND funny!
~irish
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Christ on a biscuit, I love you so very, very much. Please move to Slappytown so we can hang out every single day.
That is all.
Kthxbai
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Not that you need it AT ALL, but I just put you on a list of my favorite blogs to receive the Brilliante Weblog Award. (Don't ask about the -e. I have no clue.) I loved this story, and like everyone else who read it, I laughed too loud and had to hold my gagina like a 3 year old whose PEE PEE IS COMING OUT because hysterical laughter often diminishes my bladder control. The award is at Rage in the A.M.
Thanks for sharing!
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Name: A Lover and a Fighter
Home: New York, NY
About Me: "It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."
-Oscar Wilde
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Oh, I love that entire story.
For some reason, this cracked me up even more than the gagina:
Lilly covered one eye and blinked, which is her wink. FOR RIGHT NOW. We are in training.