We've been going through the annual hatred of summer camp at the Arens house. She hates bowling. Rather, she hates the fact that her team never gets any strikes. She's sick of swimming with the babies and hasn't passed the swimming test yet. She doesn't want to get up in the morning.

And she blames me.

"I promise I won't bother you," she says, noticing for the 800th time that my office is in our house.

Beloved reinforced it had nothing to do with that. "You know why you have to go to summer camp."

She splashed water up the sides of the bathtub. "Because Mommy thinks I'll bother her here," she said, making the mad eyes at me. "But I'll be really quiet. I just want to be home like a normal kid."

"What are you talking about?" I said. "Almost everyone you know goes to summer camp. All your friends from your old school, all your friends from this camp, nearly all of your cousins. You are not the only child in the world who has two parents with jobs. You are completely normal."

She started crying. "I just want to stay home with you."

I didn't react well. For a variety of reasons, yesterday was a shit day, and that sort of knocked me over the edge. I picked myself up, put myself in time out in my bedroom and sobbed into the pillows.

She knocked on the door after a little while. "I'm sorry I made you cry," she said.

I tried to tell her it wasn't her, but I could see she didn't believe me.

In the wee hours of the morning, she woke up with the pirate nightmare and I woke up with puffy eyes and a crying hangover.

I don't know what normal kids do. I just know what we do, how we adjust and react.

I'm pretty sure it's normal to want whatever it is you don't have.

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)