K and I made a decision when we first learned we were going to be parents. Neither of us was ready to walk away from our careers and we were truly not in a position to live on just either of our salaries at the time. My parents stepped up to help us initially with C when K went back to work part-time, but by the time M was joining us, we needed a long term solution. We opted to hire a nanny. Daycare is just crazy with wait lists and mandatory pick-up times, etc., and we wanted the boys to be able to be home, especially when they started school.

Having a domestic employee in your home is hard. We opted against an au pair, despite being able to save a lot of money, due to space constraints in the new house. We screened a ton of candidates and had one false start (someone who was a little less legal than she claimed to be…) and eventually found Jennifer. She was perfect and the boys loved her. When she got married and her husband got a job in Florida we tried awfully hard to think of a way to keep her. Alas, she moved on and we took on our second mistake. That one didn’t last long, she was not very attentive to the boys, never did anything we asked her to, etc. Then there was Katherine, whom the boys loved too. Sadly, she decided to move to closer to family (and then started her own!) And then we found our current mistake, L.

She was not a mistake out of the gate, in fact, she was an angel. It was an unlikely start, she was living in Texas, we were in Boston. But, she was interested in moving, we Skyped, we emailed, she came to visit and we found a great nanny. Right out of the gate we had found a great employee and a great friend for the boys. The first few months were an adventure, she took no guff, the boys were obedient (and may have picked up some Texas-isms in their vocabulary) and they just had a great time together. We were happy, she was happy and most importantly, the boys were happy.

Recently, however, the storm clouds moved in. She now has a boyfriend, another part time job (with both boys in school we don’t need her at the house until the afternoon) and an attitude that could peel paint off the walls. She started showing up to work late (much to the chagrin of our dog’s bladder), failing to do much of anything, started ignoring the boys in favor of her email or whatever else she was staring at on her computer and generally just gave every indication that she didn’t want to be here. Well, now she has found the eject button.

I was riding with C in the car one day after K and I returned from a wedding in San Francisco and he mentioned that he had ridden in the boyfriend’s car while we were away to go to the park. I was intrigued as I was unaware that the boyfriend had been around (in fact, we were told that he would be away that weekend) and wondered why they rode in his car and not ours which was sitting in the driveway. Some excuse about needing to go to a soccer game was given and then the bomb went off. “But,” he explained, “our car seats didn’t fit in the back seat, so we just rode without them.”

So, after I got the car back on the road and tried to control my swearing, I asked some probing questions. Yes, they have ridden without their car seats a few times in L’s car, they had told her they shouldn’t and she had always ignored them. Well, she can’t ignore us. She has put my children’s lives in danger and has the nerve to show up to work each day acting like nothing has happened. I don’t know if I’m more impressed with the audacity or the stupidity.

But, fear not reader, the boom falls tomorrow morning. I have run the scenario in my had a few times and hopefully won’t immediately go with the scorched earth approach, but no guarantees.

Damn it, though, we need to hire a new nanny…