Surreal

Last night was...interesting. It was fine, the little girl was adorable and well-behaved and went to sleep at 8:30 leaving me free to be paid handsomely to lounge on their brand-new couch and watch Time Warner's digital cable package that I'm too poor to afford. And despite a frantic phone call from my mother ("Do you even know how to work a diaper?" "No, mother, I've maintained a 3.9 GPA without understanding how adhesive strips work.), there were no major mishaps.

Oh. She hit her head with the trapeze from the swing set. But her parents were still home, so that was totally not my fault.

But it was really weird to spend the evening in this house that I've spent so many evenings in before, but with someone else's kid and someone else's stuff all over. It was even weirder because they haven't bought a lot of furniture, so they've used a lot of my grandparents' stuff.

The strangest thing is that they don't know me, and they have no idea what that house means to me. Before she left, the mom got a bottle down from the kitchen cabinet because she wasn't sure I could reach, and my first instinct was, oh, yeah, I had to use a ladder to paint that. When Zoe and I played outside, it was like I was playing with my brother and sister again when we were little. When I grabbed her to stop her from slipping on the stairs all I could think about was how worried I was that Grandpa was going to fall on those steps.

But again. Being paid to be vaguely contemplative and watch BBC America in HD? Not a bad way to spend an evening.