Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Everything is wrong

I realize that it is my job as an au pair to help take care of the kids and part of my responsibility is to get them ready for school in the morning but there are just some things that I don't feel I should get in trouble for. Yesterday I woke the girls up on time and did the regular routine. It's not my fault one of them was being slow as a snail. She finally got out to school, granted a little late but what should I do? I can't make her go any faster, I've tried. After school every Tuesday the girls go to their grandparents house until about 7 or 8pm which means I've got the whole day off. Not too long after school got out Dagmar came up to my room, almost in a panic, and told me about how Mimi (the snail) had PE in some other town and ended up walking/running all the way to her grandparents house. (I guess another mom that lives on the street saw Mimi and then told Dagmar... if I understood her right.) Mimi's grandpa usually picks her up from school on Tuesdays and he was confused and worried because no one was coming out of the school at the normal time. Any way, apparently this is my fault because I don't go through every single paper that Mimi brings home so we know when she has special activities like this. But really, why is that my fault? Dagmar is the mother, why can't she go through the papers? I'm just there to help with homework because Dagmar doesn't know how to do it patiently and it always ends in tears and yelling. Luckily I only have about two weeks left and then I'm done with this drama.
Then there was this morning. It started off bad when I slept through my alarm for about half an hour. Luckily both the kids were up with Dagmar and already eating breakfast. So since she's already there I don't see the need for both of us to be up so I went back to bed. A little after 8 the doorbell rings and then Dagmar calls me downstairs. Our neighbor said that something happened with Majlie, her bike was just on the side of the road and she was running the rest of the way to school. Dagmar told me to take the car and find Majlie. So what do I do? I go upstairs to put pants and socks and a coat on since it's below freezing outside. A few seconds later Dagmar yells something and I hear the car start as I'm putting my shoes on. Since I'm already up I decide to eat breakfast. Half way through my cereal Dagmar comes in and starts right up with "Why didn't you just go? You should have gone out the door right when I asked you to but what did you do? You ran upstairs. Majlie had class and can't miss that much and she was crying." I couldn't believe it. So I said "Sorry, my first thought was to put pants and socks on because it's cold outside. Besides you asked which one of us should go and I said 'I don't care.'" Any way, I had had every intention of apologizing about not waking up but after that I was so mad there was no way.
Then I ended up having to go get Majlie's bike that was locked to a bus stop not too far from home and I don't get why she didn't just run back home instead of trying to run all the way to school. It took me 25 minutes to walk slowly over there (I wanted to be out of the house as long as possible) and carry her bike back because the back tire had somehow completely come off her wheel. For Majlie to run back to the house would have only taken 5 minutes tops, and then she could have explained what happened and we could have driven her to school. Simple as that. Unfortunately nothing these people do is simple.
To make matters worse I cleaned Majlie's window today for the second or third time in a week. Of course it gets dirty, it's a window and it's raining and snowing outside! But honestly, it's below freezing out there. Do you know how hard it is to wash a window when it's that cold? And to get it to Dagmar's standards, ie streak free, spot free, clean as the day it was made... it's near impossible. Now it's almost noon. What else is going to go wrong today? The only thing that could make this day worse is if Majlie brings home her English test and has a 3 (C, they just do numbers here) or worse. It's not my fault that Majlie won't ever practice with me. I can't force people to do stuff they don't want to do. Besides, Dirk was home over the weekend and said he would help her study too. I hate that I have to play so many roles in this family and I'm not even part of the family, just someone they pay. Sometimes I think it would be easier if both parents were gone so that it was just me and I could do things my way instead of being criticized every step of the way. Seems like everything I do lately is wrong.