Misadventures in "Sitting"

Man oh man. A combination of daylight savings time, lack of proper sleep for the past three nights, and overall stress have resulted in a somewhat-depressed-me today. If I sat down and really tried, I'm sure I could eek out a few honest tears.

As most of you know, I am a nanny. It's how I pay the bills. This is not an unprecedented choice of vocation, as the majority of my past jobs have revolved around childcare. In fact, I have had a virtually uninterrupted stream of babysitting jobs since I was 10 years old, so becoming a glorified babysitter - the fabled Nanny - seemed a logical choice. On the side, I do more babysitting. And house-cleaning, and pet-sitting. (Gotta pay off those student loans somehow yo.)  Another type of sitting job that recently fell into my lap is new to me: house/pet-sitting. Sleep in house, take care of pets. Pretty straightforward, no? A piece of cake for an old hand like me, used to the much more demanding scenario of screaming children and domestic chaos, yes?

Um, no. Hereafter follows:

The Tail* of How House/Pet-Sitting is Actually Not Easier Than Babysitting, 

and Is Also Much, Much Scarier

*(yes, yes, I did make a pun).

For the past three days I have been house/pet-sitting for a family that lives about five minutes south of my own house. Initially, I thought this would be a great job. Their house is spectacularly beautiful and modern, having just been built last year and furnished with all the most luxurious amenities. It is situated in a beautiful stand of wilderness, located a respectable ways off the main road. It is light and airy and open - a lovely atmosphere -- until it gets dark. And then it actually becomes terrifying.

For one thing, as previously mentioned, it is a respectable ways off the main road: lonely, quiet, secluded. No one can hear me scream. For another thing, as previously mentioned, it is light, airy, and open - thus dark, cold, and cavernous when the sun sets. The owners for some reason (perhaps intentionally?) have not put curtains or even blinds on ANY of the huge, numerous, panoramic windows and doors that line the house - not even the ones in the master bedroom! What is light, airy, and pleasant during the daylight becomes creepy, unsettling, and exposed at night. (What if someone or something is watching me through those transparent windows at night?! I have no way to protect or shield myself, unless I hang up all the sheets and blankets. At this point it seems a tempting plan.)

This is where the alarm system is supposed to swoop in and reassure me, but it's actually very, very cold comfort, as alarms systems do and always have made me incredibly nervous and jumpy. I don't know why. Repressed childhood experience, perhaps? I am always worried that I will set them off through ignorance or forgetfulness, and then be paralyzed by the resulting fear and noise.

So, for those reasons, my stress-level starts rising as soon as the sun sets, and skyrockets until bed time, when a whole new set of problems emerges. For one thing, I have rarely ever in my past experience stayed the night in a big house all alone. Of course, there have been times when my family has been gone on a trip or something and I've slept at home alone, but our house is:

1) Familiar - I can identify any night noises. (That is, when noises actually manage to sneak through the reassuring background noise of the air-purifier in my room.)

2) Blessed - within an inch of its life by multiple priests on various occasions so that no demon or evil thing dares come near that sacred territory. KiYAH!

3) Pet-free - My mother would have the heart attack of all heart attacks if we ever even dared suggest allowing non-human creatures in the Blessed and Sacred Territory known as HER HOUSE.

But in this house...

1) It is so quiet at night because everything is so modern and new and noiseless. Even small sounds, like a faucet dripping, are loud. The sound of the ice-maker in the fridge is like a freaking earthquake apocalypse and the first few times it dumped ice into the receptacle, it sent me shooting bolt-upright in bed, shaking. I turned on the ceiling fan in an attempt to produce some sort of baseline noise, but wouldn't you know, it's so new it just turns silently while I freeze my tooshie. Thus, I notice every little sound, worry about what it is, and find it almost impossible to sleep.

2) Another facet of the night-noises issue is the pets. Since there are three of them in this house (1 dog, 2 cats) there are a lot of live things that go "bump" (and sometimes "YOWL" and "CRASH") in the white-noiseless night. Not only do the pets produce a thousand alarming sounds, but those two, young rapscallions of cats are bound and determined that MY face is the properest and most interesting place to sleep. Multiple times a night they jump up, "THUNK," on the bed, and sinuously approach, all the while attempting to lull me with amorous, deep purring. Then they WALK on my FACE. And try to sit on it. Oh my heck, kitty. No. NO!

 Last night, during Bob's tenth OPERATION: SIT ON HER FACE attempt, I banished him and shut the door to the room. His piteous mewing and the subsequent cessation of all sound worked to increase my anxiety even further. (The cats have a demonstrable tendency to get into mischief when they feel neglected, and have already broken one extremely expensive-looking vase on my watch. In revenge for me locking them out of the bathroom, they also knocked over my glass of water on the bedside table, soaking various items left there by my employers.)

3) Top this all off with an irrational fear of intruders who might set off the alarm, and you have a well-rounded though not exhaustive list of my house/pet-sitting woes.

 I have gotten no more than two hours of sleep at a time for the last three endless nights.

I am so tired. 

And then this morning happened.

Before I left the house at 6:30 am to go to work, I let out all three pets as my employers requested. I strewed the entire house with blessed salt (which my employers have no idea about, but it definitely won't hurt them!), set the alarm, and headed off into the cold, dark morning. If you ask me, daylight savings time was a dastardly, dastardly invention.

Well. At 9:15 am I received a call from the harried house owners on vacation in Colorado. The alarm had somehow been set off, and cops and in-laws were swarming the house, attempting to set things aright. Had I not let out the dog before I left? Because they could see her inside through the windows (those oh-so naked windows), and she simply could not be allowed to stay inside for the whole day....

 I verified that, indeed, I had let out all three animals that morning, I was sure of it. After half an hour of flurried phone-calls and text-messages back and forth, the whole story came to light. The dog, Aretha (named after Aretha Franklin!) had let herself into the house by the unlocked master-bedroom door and tripped the alarm.

First of all. UNLOCKED?!?! ...and... how the heck does a dog let itself inside via a human door? So many questions!!?!!

In retrospect, it may have been helpful for the house owners to let me know that 1) there is a special, extraordinary way to make the house doors *truly* lock, and 2) the dog knows how to let itself in. Hellooooo! This is terrifying news! For the past three days I have been living in a not-*truly*-locked transparent house, secluded from civilization with pets who clearly know more than I do about getting in and out of that place. So. Scary.

I really do not want to go back there to sleep for two more nights, but the bullet has to be bit. And I've already deposited the check.