I have always been an obnoxiously responsible person, to the point where I've managed to take most of the joy out of life. But now I realize I was a mere amateur.
"You are the most organized person I know," my best friend has told me on more than one occasion. I feel sort of smug about that, despite the fact that "organized" can very often, especially in my case, be easily replaced with "anal-retentive," which isn't so much of a compliment. I wow the world with my spreadsheets and budget analyses, my three-month forecasts and multiple-variation contingency plans. My husband long ago happily relinquished control of most of the household since I am a better planner and also it isn't a fun job, something he's always known but nobody ever told me.
Tom and I (and by "Tom and I" I mean "I") had everything calendared out: big move, home purchase, baby. And with the exception of a few months here and there, everything pretty much went according to plan. I had the crib picked out the moment we confirmed a heartbeat. I had it put together before I reached my third trimester. I put it together myself because Tom was assigned the less romantic task of cleaning out the garage so that everything previously stored in the baby's room could be moved out of my way. We still had four months to go, but I could not wait a day for Tom to finish the garage before I got started on the crib. This was the way the schedule had to go, because I said so, and I am the Most Organized Woman Ever.
Or at least so I thought. Because a few weeks ago, still with over three months to go before my due date, I started looking into daycare.
"Wow," those of you who don't have kids yet are probably thinking, "you won't need daycare for another seven months and you're already thinking about that?"
Or at least that's what I thought when I started doing it. "Look at me!" I thought. "I am so far ahead of the game! When this kid is born I will have EVERYthing in place and a statue will be erected in my honor - World's Most Organized Mom!" Yeah, right. Every single place I called has a waiting list of at least - at LEAST - a year. The place most highly recommended, which literally costs per month the same as the mortgage on a summer home would, does not anticipate openings until the end of 2009.
"So," I said quasi-casually to the very nice woman on the phone, "if I were better prepared, I would have gotten on your waiting list before I got pregnant."
There was, if you don't mind the blatant metaphore, a pregnant silence. A silence I took to mean, "Oh, honey, you are SO naive."
But wait, there's more! In order to get on the waiting list you have to take a tour. And the TOURS were booked for a month out. So I got on the list to get a tour in order to get on the waiting list. But wait, there's even more! Once you have the tour, in order to get on the waiting list you have to pay $100. Not for any reason. The $100 will never be refunded or applied to your first month's tuition should you be so fortunate as to be called at some point in the distant future before your kid goes to college. It's just because they can do that if they want to. I guess I should be glad they don't charge $1,000 because, really, what's to stop them? $100 is quite humanitarian of them. They are givers.
Several of my coworkers raved about this place or I wouldn't have bothered. There was also the fact that ALL of the places operate this way, so I might as well reach for the stars. Prior to my tour, about which I was as nervous as if I were taking the SATs again, my friend and coworker advised, "The Director is deaf in one ear. No, wait, both ears. Oh, I don't know. But speak up."
So when I arrived at the front door, eager to make a good impression, I yelled, "HELLO! I AM HERE FOR THE TOUR!" to which he responded, wincing, "I'm sorry the Director had to leave early today, but I'll be happy to conduct your tour."
Lovely. Off to a perfect start, we headed towards the "infant room." This is where, you may have guessed, the infants hang out. It looked pretty nice. There were even a couple of infants in there, who all looked wise far beyond their years, like lifers who were about ten years into their sentence and pretty much resigned at this point. I think they were trying to tell me something with their eyes as I passed - but what? "Lady, are you really going to pay $100 to put your name on a list that, as far as you know, is totally bogus as soon as a friend of a friend of the deaf Director wants to get his kid in? Really. You have GOT to be smarter than this. I can barely sit up and I get it."
At the end of the tour I thanked the guy and left, thinking, "Well, that seemed like a nice place." But what do I know? As far as I remember, that was the first time I'd set foot in a daycare center in 32 years, at which time I had a very different perspective. All daycares are terrifying anyway.
So while I continued doggedly to make absolutely no headway on the daycare business I went about the next Really Responsible Task on my list - creating a will. "Why do we need a will?" Tom whined. "We don't OWN anything." Which isn't exactly true - we own a lot of debt. That is to say, we own a house. Plus, I had to explain patiently to him, as he is the kind of person who would rather enjoy life than be Really Responsible all the time, we were now going to be parents, and we had to make sure our daughter would be taken care of in the unlikely event of our untimely demise. Tom looked completely shocked when I said this. I guess it hadn't occurred to him. No wonder he's such a happy guy. I wish these things didn't occur to me, either.
A few phone calls revealed that the business of writing down, "I want my spouse to get it all and my kid to not be raised by creepy strangers," can cost you anywhere between $1000-2500. It seems to me that when a court is involved, a lawyer is justified in charging a shitload of money for his services. Because courts are really, really scary. Attorneys are like the Indiana Joneses of the legal system, swinging out there on a rope in front of all the danger to bring you back whatever it is you needed to get or defend. But to write stuff on a piece of paper - stuff we TELL them to write, not stuff they come up with on their own - which doesn't even have to be filed with a government entity? $2500 for that? Come ON.
But they do, because they can. I guess I should just be grateful they don't charge me $100 to get on a waiting list to see a lawyer to pay him $2500 to write a will.
Next week's task: write a plan to eliminate the National Debt. I just need to focus on something simple for a little while.
