Reason #36 – I gloated at my incredible babysitter’s one failure

Reason #36 – I gloated at my incredible babysitter’s one failure

Jul 14

Gloat, v. i. – To gaze with malignant satisfaction; to exult maliciously, sometimes also triumphantly, in another’s loss or discomfort; — usually in a bad sense. [1913 Webster]

I am a mean-spirited, catty, malevolent bitch. Seriously. I managed to shock myself today, and my opinion of my moral standing isn’t all that high.

To get an idea of the degree of maliciousness I’m telling you about, think of this: I’m a professional writer (Yes, some people pay me to write. Fancy that.) and yet I had to resort to a thesaurus for the right word to describe the depths of depravity to which I sunk today.

Some of my choices were:

abusive, back-biting, belittling, bitchy, calumniatory, calumnious, censorious, contemptuous, contumelious, defamatory, deprecatory, depreciative, depreciatory, derisive, derisory, derogative, derogatory, despiteful, detractory, disparaging, evil, hateful, libelous, malevolent, minimizing, nagging, naggy, peevish, pejorative, petulant, querulous, rancorous, resentful, ridiculing, scandalous, scurrile, scurrilous, shrewish, slanderous, slighting, spiteful, vicious, vilifying, vixenish, vixenly, wicked

I had a hard time settling for gloating.

(Now I’m looking for ways to get contumelious, pejorative or shrewish in a post. Watch this space.)

C’s babysitter – who happens to be our housemate too – is THE BEST. No, really. You think your babysitter is good, but she is not a patch on ours. The lovely, spectacular Adi (or “AH-dee”, as he will surely call her when he can put two syllables together) looks after C way better than I ever could. She teaches him tricks and sings songs to him, and she single-handedly cured him of The Worst Diaper Rash Ever. She even encourages me to go out more so she gets to spend more time with C. Top that!

Adi is a godsend, and the only person who loves her more than I do is my son. Sometimes I worry he loves her more than he loves me, especially because I couldn’t blame him if he did.

C and I got home late-ish tonight, and he woke up in a foul mood when Adi got him out of the car. He hates falling asleep in one place and waking up in another, and I totally understand how it feels (though it must be extra annoying with no booze involved.) Adi took him to his room and tried to put him to bed while I shot the breeze checked Twitter did VERY IMPORTANT grown-up things that had to be done just then.

But he didn’t settle. In fact, he got really really upset.

I read some blogs got a drink waited a reasonable time, but the screaming only got worse. I tiptoed and handed Adi a fresh bottle of formula for C. More screaming. I counted to five. Holler holler. I gave up and walked in to see if there was something I could do, but frankly I did not have a lot of hope: if Adi couldn’t make it better, what chance did I have?

Tentatively, I picked C up.

Amazingly, he stopped crying.

*shock*

“Ha! Lookit that! I picked him up and He. Stopped. Crying. Who’s your mama? Who’s your mama now? He likes me better than you, bitch!! HOW’S THEM APPLES???”

There must be a special circle in Hell for people who “exult maliciously and triumphantly” at their perfect babysitter’s one and only fail, and oooh boy I have earned myself a box seat in it.