Baby sitting and food

Baby sitting and food

We had vegetarian pizza last night, one had olives and cheese, the other an assortment of items, pineapple being one of them.  I guess I like pineapple, but it is one of those foods, like ice cream, that I like but would not walk across the street for…….however…….since it was on pizza I dug in anyway.  Pizzas, pizza, pizza, love it almost as much as sushi.  I also love it, much to the disgust of some of my friends, cold the next morning with lots of  hot very sweet tea to accompany it; what a treat!

I also love dill pickles with cheddar cheese, well with any kind of cheese actually.  When I was in my early teens, I and my brothers used to baby sit.  Having so many younger siblings made us good at taking care of little ones, why I even washed out diapers (cloth ones were used during the dark ages) in the toilet, which was a highly desired skill.  Well I was at the Clark’s house, one of my favorite places to baby sit, they had lots of soda, comics (something I was addicted to at that young age), and three children that were actually fun to take care of.  One night as I was looking thru the fridge, I noticed a large wedge of cheddar cheese, and some Velveeta also, and next to it was a large jar of Kosher Pickles (!), well I made short order of em, down they went.  The next day the Clark’s called me up and asked if I ate all the cheese and pickles, and I said yes, sorry about that, but it was one of my favorite food groups, Mrs Clark said “ok” laughed and hung up.  So I thought, well they will not have me back, and forgot all about it.  They called the next weekend and asked me to stay with their children for the three days, since they had to go to some kind of conference.  So I said ok, good money, at least for some one as young as me.  I arrived they filled me in, and the last thing they did was walk me to the fridge and showed me a special section they put aside for me.  Yep, lots of cheddar, Velveeta, and other cheeses with two jars of Kosher Dill’s just waiting for me to feast upon.  Mrs Clark then started laughing, and could not stop, and finally after she got her breathe told me that when she is pregnant she craved cheese and dill’s.  Well I assured her that I was not pregnant, and that caused her to laugh some more.  I figured I best not tell her about how much I like fried chicken dipped in chocolate.  Hey I just love the juxtaposition of flavors that is all, besides lots of people like foods like that.

Now if the Clark’s were great to work with, others were jobs from hell.  I remember one night being called to see if would sit for some new clients.  I knew them, so said ok, be glad to.  When I arrived I first noticed that the house was bare, no TV (!), just one chair and a couch in the living room, and to top it of when I left and went to the fridge, there was only bread and ice water in it!  Well I knew that some jobs were better than others, so got my book, something I always took with me just in case, and started reading.  A little latter I played some cards with the boy, nice kid, wondered for second if he was really related to the employers from hell.  About 10 PM after I put the boy to bed, we played “go fish”, and he won, never was good at cards, but he was only 5 years old!  Well I was reading, and felt something crawling inside my shirt, so after a little dance around the room, it dropped out, a big palmetto bug, a juicy black one.  Now me and those critters don’t get along, and in Panama if not kept under control could take over a house; you got it, they did not control them and were over run…… why was I not surprised.  I looked around and the walls were crawling with them, many were on the floor.  I guess after we stopped playing cards, and I was reading, things got quiet enough for them to come out.  So with full intent of the will, and I guess a way to strike back at my employers from the dark side; I started too calmly, with wrapped news paper in hand, to start whacking these interlopers.  Whack, whack, whackity whack till about 2 AM, I made my rounds.  Then I calmly got a broom and swept them up into a nice neat pile in the middle of the room.  Soon after that ‘they’ came home.  When they came in the front door, they stopped and saw this two foot pile of palmettos in their path.  I acted as if nothing was there, gave them a report sans the bugs, got paid and left.  For some reason they never called me back.  Rejection is so hard to take heh heh heh. 

One thing, in Panama at least in the very early 50's, insect control in the home was very important, if not taken seriously you really got overun big time.
 

I have some more experiences with baby sitting and may write about them a little later.