Zen is dead to me

I knew the zen from yesterday’s ordeal was slipping through my fingers when I quickly starting pounding glasses of wine last night after we put our darling daughter to bed. They say denial is the first sign of being anti-zen. Yeah…umm…. Not so much on the zen if you are turning to the bottle….that’s what they say anyway.

And then, I knew my zen was yesterday’s news this morning at 3:45am when I awoke with a horrid stomach ache and anxiety rising in my chest…..unable to return to sleep until around 5:30am.

 That’s when it hit me – just like Kitty-Time’s friend, www.selfmademom.net, has blogged about, the nanny breakup is hard on the heart and the mind. But this time, I was broken up with. I didn’t get to break up with her first.

I might have thought I was all big and bad with my Monday morning lecture. But really – I was just spewing around a lot of hot air..and nanny was probably wondering why I don’t brush my teeth before mouthing off on a Monday morning!

Oh no – zen is no longer my middle name….and I was broken up with yesterday.

And really, while I’m not passing notes in Biology class about all the ways she was wrong for us, it seems that this blog is really just the replacement. Isn’t this basically my version of writing it on the wall? Didn’t someone say that life is really just an extension of 7th grade?

While I was up at 3:45am, blaming my husband’s bad dinner and the sauce on my stomach ache, I had plenty of time to muse…and let’s not forget..poke my husband to let him know that I was up and couldn’t sleep and am very anxious. Meanwhile, he uttered something inaudible and continued snoring…again…much to my chagrin.

To yesterday’s point, he is loving and wonderful and supportive, but he can sleep like a baby through all of this because he knows that I will do the leg work to find the next Mary Poppins. Why do husband’s get away with this? They get to show up one day and pick the nanny, sorta like they get to just show up to the hospital and just get a baby. Meanwhile, we do all the heavy lifting.

And so, back to being broken up with. The relationship with the nanny really is like your teen boyfriend. It starts off wonderful. You love one another. You are exploring new territory, you chat in the morning, you laugh about in-laws and husbands. And then time passes and there are days you want to fire her because your baby goes to her before you. The foreplay and flirting – oh that’s cholesterol lowering over with when that happens. By that point, Kitty’s claws are out, and they are sharpened.

 Then you settle into a routine and things start to get a little too comfortable. You see the areas where she’s slacking, you see where things have gotten a little lax, but it’s a power struggle and ultimately, she holds the upper hand. She knows you need her. And so you look the other way. Meanwhile, each evening you knit-pick all the things she did wrong that day, while your husband pretends to listen, or you call your mom and together you trade secrets of all the nanny’s flaws. You feed off each other. Ain’t life grand?

For me, I knew I had hit rock bottom on the night after her kid puked all over my brand new, velvet 2-day old couches and I found myself calling her that night to assure her everything was OK and not to worry about it and just have a nice vacation. And come back!

When you catch yourself doing these things, you know something has gone awry. You have lost touch with reality. You are over-compensating for the relationship’s flaws.

When my nanny failed to return from a 6-week vacation on-time, with no phone call alerting us to the new arrival date, I went into full-blown panic mode and almost went into cardiac arrest. Again, how did I not see that this relationship was no longer healthy? But what I did do then was mourn the loss of her. I went through the emotions of sadness, anger and fear. She beat me down. So that when she did return late, and rather apologetically, I was over her.

I realized that there was an end to our relationship and that chapter was closing soon.

But I pulled the ultimate dating move. I tried to show her that there was a new sheriff in town, take back my status as boss-man, and redefine our relationship with new rules. Only to find out that she had one for me. She was ready to take it to the final level and just end it.

And so, here I am. Licking my wounds. Really – she broke up with me before I broke up with her.

And I’m left wondering, it was me, not her? What’s wrong with my daughter? Could she really have it better anywhere else? How could she beat me to it?

Will I find another one? A better one? A more reliable nanny? What if no available nannies want us?

Time will tell, kittens, but it’s pretty clear that zen is so dead to me. It’s so February 26th, and panic and anxiety – are so February 27th.