So if feelings aren’t your thing, look away. My babysitter has stopped showing up. Just stopped coming. Says her driveway is too snowy (even though it’s 50 degrees) so I’ve begun the slow, gut-wrenching task of trying to find childcare for my kids.

Part-time childcare.

Ever done something so sad? Not sad because the poor dears will be cared for by someone other than me, but because one faces the grim edge of the childcare crisis in this country when one attempts the audaciously hopeful but ultimately vain task of finding care for under $2,000 per month even in a crap hole backwater like Bellingham.

What I’ve found today: waiting lists, waiting lists, they can fit one of the kids but not the other, they have room for Chloe but not Zander, they can take them but only for two hours every third day.

I was starting the long process of researching private full-day Kindergarten for Zander for Fall 2007 because Bellingham doesn’t offer full-day public Kindergarten…. only from 9-11:30am M-F which is sort of like “Kindergarten dust” if you ask me.. what with all the driving and lugging around and schlepping. The kids are going to chew off their own heads if they have to have another under-stimulated — over-televisioned year at home.

So now I’m utterly scrambling, and missing work, and getting impatient emails from my boss who wonders why I’m not there, and trying hard to not cry in front of the kids (& failing) and losing hope in humanity. What good are stainless steel appliances when one doesn’t have proper health care and public education is a rotting hellish cesspool?

If my only option is one of those creepy places in a strip mall, I’ll have to hang up my working-girl garb for awhile longer and try to not go to a mental institution and stay at home.