Remember a couple of days ago when I didn’t know whether my feeling that Laura wasn’t going to stick around was intuition or paranoia? Turned out it was intuition.

She called me earlier. Her appointment this morning is to meet a plumber at the property she’s renting out, because her renters called over the weekend and reported a water heater leak. She said she took the liberty of arranging for a plumber today, so she’d get it taken care of earlier in the week rather than later, but wanted me to feel comfortable that if she had Allie full-time and I was back at work, then she would’ve rescheduled or done something else; she wouldn’t have flaked on Allie. So that’s fine. Her plumber window is between 12-2 this afternoon, so she’s going to come as soon as she can after that.

BUT…after I told her about my feelings that she’s holding back and that I had wanted to talk to her about it today to see why my gut was telling me this about her, she said that I am intuitively correct. She’s still having ongoing discussions with Saddleback Church, so she hadn’t written them off after they’d met last Monday. Also, prior to her emailing me about the nanny position, she’d taken a test with the Huntington Beach School District for an education-related job, and she’d said there was only 1 position open and there were so many people there that she left discouraged, feeling like she wouldn’t be able to beat everyone for that one spot. However, over the weekend, she received an email from them saying congratulations, she scored in the top 10 and they would like to set her up for an interview. So now she feels like whereas before, she had no doors open to her, now many doors are opening to her at the same time, and she’s torn about which to enter. She said she’s trying to figure out where God wants her to go. She wants to take the nanny position with us, but doesn’t want to make a mistake, or step into something unclear. She asked me to put the agreement terms for her employment together so that she could sign a contract with us, and that way, with all the details securely ironed out, she would refuse the school district’s interview and come onboard. I noticed she didn’t give such a resolution about Saddleback Church, however.

I had been wanting to iron out the details of our arrangement, also, but she didn’t make herself available last week or over the weekend, so I had been planning on negotiating all terms this week when I saw her. I also don’t want a situation where an unexpected sticking point blows the whole agreement up, so I’d rather handle the details sooner than later. I told her that even with an agreement in place, if it turns out some way we’re doing things isn’t working, I’m open to talking about and renegotiating the issue. She was happy and relieved.

Another thing I’d felt over the weekend intuitively was that her daughters were a huge concern to her and that she may be “flakey” based upon their needs. If she quits it’d be because she decided to spend more time with them at home. That turned out to be pretty right on, also, because Laura said the reason she’s less inclined toward the school district job is because it would take an hour each way to commute there, and then working all day, that would make her unavailable to her children at a time when she believed, from hearing a Christian radio show discuss this early on, was the most important for a mother to be around her children — their teenage years. I don’t disagree with her, because I get that peer influence is at an all-time high at that age. The kids need to know that a parent is available and will be there to hold them accountable for their actions. That alone prevented me from doing a lot of bad stuff when I was a teen (“my mom would KILL me!” was a very common thought). I asked her if the long hours working for us would give her the same concern. She said no, because we’re close to her home, AND because I’d already said that her kids are welcome in our house when she’s here working. I confirmed that. She said her teen had already said, “Oh, then I can go over and do homework.” I’m all for kids doing homework at our house, as long as they aren’t too noisy. Besides, her mom will be here the whole time supervising. I don’t expect a teenager is going to be distracting Laura from caring for Allie. Another toddler, that’s a different story.

Intuitively, I feel somewhat a sense of relief, like a heaviness lifted partially. So I know I’m on the right track. It’s not completely lifted, yet, but it’s nowhere near as heavy as it had felt this weekend. This weekend, it was almost like Laura was nonexistent in our future when I tried to project forward. I’m so tired of this, though. I think if Nanny Laura doesn’t work out, I’m ready to turn to daycare. My cousin Jennifer’s having a great experience with her baby Alexis in daycare right now, and the people I know who’ve placed their infants in have only positive things to say. I’d just prefer that Allie be a little older, but it may not work out that way. At least she’s getting MUCH better with the noise issue, just like the pediatrician said she would. She slept through neighbors’ gardeners today (she moved and turned her head a couple of times, but settled back down without really waking up), and other outside noises over the weekend.

Laura just called; she’s on her way. I have the points of our agreement written down as notes and we can talk about other points and then fashion it into an agreement.

Another problem, one that I didn’t see coming… I was about to scoop out the pee clumps in Dodo’s litterbox this morning when I noticed raisin-sized blood stains in the center of each of the 2 pee clumps. I’ve put a call into the vet. 🙁 It looks like the pee stream ended with some blood coming out of my kitty. He’s doing better with the overnight yowling; he pretty much only does it early evening, and/or early morning (5am), so I figured he’s feeling better. The vet called back and left a voicemail when I was putting Allie down for her morning nap. I tried to call back after I put Allie down for her noon nap, but the doctor was with a patient. So we’re still playing phone tag.