My daughter is in between needing daycare and being able to get a job during the summer, and we are sort of flummoxed about it. She has alternated between staying with me as I work and attending a parks & rec summer camp that is unfulfilling but what we can afford. We can't afford a nanny. She doesn't need a babysitter.

She's at the age that I remember loving summer the most, when the little kid stuff -- like swingsets and trampolines and splash parks -- is still fun and nostalgic but she doesn't need me hovering around her to enjoy it. She's at the age of flashlight tag and being able to light fireworks and riding your bike to the pool and walking down to the creek to look for frogs alone.

This summer we've patched together help from my parents (bless them), the parks & rec camp, a week of horse camp and a parent or two working from home, but I need a real solution for next summer, the summer of twelve, and the summers afterward until she can get a job. I don't even know how old you have to be to get a job here. I think I had to be sixteen in Iowa, though there was that one sketchy restaurant in town that hired fourteen-year-olds.

What do you do with a summertime middle-schooler? Is camp really the only answer? She's not interested in the parks & rec, she doesn't play sports, and the really cool camps are either too far away to commute to and still get to work on time or cost way more than we can afford to pay.

I'm frustrated. Finding childcare has been really the only part of parenting that I loathe. My daughter is wonderful. I don't want her to dread summer because she hates where she has to spend her days while my husband and I work, but staying home all summer isn't really an option. Why is this so hard?

So last week, Beloved lived through a tornado. Our Corolla, unfortunately, did not. It's totalled, according to the insurance company. Still, we had plans to go to Iowa on Friday for a reunion with three of my four college roommates (the fourth lives in DC and has a new bebe), so ONWARD! we went. 

Now I'm sitting here looking at a full to-do list, a wrecked and increasingly stinky car and an upcoming business trip to Dad 2.0 on Thursday. My parents are coming down Wednesday because Beloved's job keeps him from being anywhere near our front door when the little angel gets home on the bus, and I'll be gone through Sunday. They'll leave on Saturday when Beloved can fully take over again. 

Last night the little angel had a fever, which appears to be gone now, so she went to school, and I have I hope a babysitter coming at 4:30 because I have a board meeting across town tonight. 

This is working parenthood. This is life.

Hi! I stink!

Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

I took Friday off. But then there was this really important call I had to be on. Approximately fifteen minutes before that call, as I was frantically cleaning because my parents were coming, the neighbor walked in. To tell me our other neighbor, who watches both our girls after school, is moving. In a month.

We talked about how we were going to squeeze through the month of May before school gets out and her daughter stays home with her (she's a teacher) and my daughter goes to already-planned summer camp.

"The thing is," I found myself saying, "say for instance she comes home and I have a really important conference call in eleven minutes," and the neighbor was all, "yeah, yeah," and I felt myself fighting tears because all this was happening and my neighbor was in my foyer and my husband and daughter were home and I really, really did have a super important conference call in eleven minutes.

I had to very rudely excuse myself to go upstairs for the conference call. And then I shoved the whole childcare problem to a back corner of my head, where it pops up from time to time like a rubber duck that refuses to stay submerged. It was there, staring at me, when I woke up this morning.

There are options, they just have to be examined. The child isn't going to like any of them that we can afford, that are practical. After a week of spring break, I could barely get her out of bed this morning. I could barely get myself out of bed this morning.

I think I need an entire day of sleeping. That would fix EVERYTHING.

A few weeks ago, PunditMom e-mailed me asking me to come up with a topic for her Mothers of Intention series.  I chose childcare.  Read it here.

Here are some other posts I've written on childcare:

Childcare in America: Shame on Us
Damn Oz
Broke and Childful: Middle Class Malaise
Where Will We Ever Find Part-time, Professional Work?
Oz Screws Up Again
The Wicked Flu Witch Is Coming to Oz

There are more, lo, there are more.  But looking for them is wearying and bringing back all the angst and hate of the little angel's first year in daycare.  And reminding me I'm supposed to call her Spanish teacher to figure out why she no longer wants to go there.  (sigh)