her secret weapon

I have to say (since I have certainly gotten enough posts out of complaining about him) that Mr. Squarepeg is really picking up the slack since I've been back at work. Everything he refused to help with before, plus more, he now does cheerfully. Although the work he does from home is stressful and demands his concentration, he feels flexible enough with it to take care of the endless details that come up.

He's just so tickled I'll be bringing in a steady salary. I can't believe how much it means to him.

He does the shopping. He does the driving (of the kid, to and from school and after-school groups), and he took over the rotten standard transmission car so that I could drive our automatic to work until they give me a new one. He's never complained about it. Today he dealt with our fourth cleaning lady in two months, this time a quiet little Ethiopian woman brought to us by a cleaning service. This has become my least favorite chore, and I was thrilled that I didn't have to deal with it at all. He was spared no aggravation: She banged around the house knocking and scratching walls, and managed to break a socket cover that I don't think I could break if I tried -- at least not without a hammer. (I super-glued it when I got home, and it may stay on if no one touches it again.) When I called to ask how things were going with her, he didn't sound happy at all, but he was coping okay. And I got to come home to a clean house -- properly done, this time, if not without mishap.

The only thing he still won't do is cook anything that requires more than a 2-minute microwave, although he makes sure the kid is somehow fed and does her homework. (The two of them together can make pasta or an omelette -- she knows how, while he supervises over the fire.) Most importantly, she doesn't have to come home to an empty house after school, which has to be the very very worst thing about working mothers. I believe this common situation of children coming home to no supervision -- another one of the nasty drawbacks of today's working culture -- is a huge contributor to the deteriorating state of society. I don't want to rant about it, it just saddens me so much how many children have to cope with this. Sure, some are fine. But too many aren't. I'm very lucky that I don't have to worry about this aspect of working.

Today Daddy Daycare dropped the young miss off at a computer course for the first time. I was just leaving work for the half-hour drive home when she called me, crying, only 15 minutes into the class. Some boys a year older than her were bothering her and pushed her off the computer she was at, while the teacher, a very young man, seemed helpless to control them. She was upset and wanted to go home. Fortunately, Mr. S. was not far away and got over there immediately. He showed up to be her "big brother" in the situation, playing the tough guy with these young rowdies and even shoving one of them (to his later embarrassment) who refused to get out of the chair. In the end, she stayed, and when I came to pick her up later, the teacher was actually very sweet and apologetic and said the troublemakers wouldn't be back next week -- they had only come because it was a free demo lesson -- and that he really wanted the budding geek to come back. He hadn't forced them out, because he didn't want to start a scene, I gather. Perhaps he was wise. My daughter decided she wanted to continue after all. She was very pleased at the parental support she got in this event, proudly calling us her "secret weapon."

Not a bad day, all things considered.