Impromptu Babysitting

The noise starts at 7 am and goes on until 5 pm or later. Concrete mixing trucks, rasping saws and hollow banging echo off every wall in the house. And to add to today's frayed nerves, my friend brought her energetically overendowed child to help clean my place. God help us all.

This place is by no means child-friendly. There's not even a tv to suck the intelligence out...

I understand completely why she brought him and I would have too, probably, in her circumstances. She knew I wouldn't raise a fuss. After all, the babysitter is on vacation and he's not going to classes. School is indefinitely postponed due to flu worries-H1N1, right?-and though malls, cinemas, soccer stadiums and the like are packed to capacity, school can't possibly go on. That's Brazil for you.

But I'm not very child-friendly myself either, today. I have a headache and I cried myself to sleep last night for no good reason and woke up much too early. I'm behind on my personal to-do list. And I really, really wanted to take a nap today.

Instead, I'm fielding questions on the nature of the universe, how many insects exist in Brazil, why you can hear the ocean when you put a shell to your ear, how they get salt from ocean water, and why butterflies don't fly anymore after you dunk them in water. (I'm not sure what they've been doing to the poor butterflies, or why.)

The kid's probably only seen the ocean a couple of times, so we went out for about an hour to play on the sand and bask in the sun. But he got mad because I wouldn't let him take off his pants and jump in the ocean. Imagine that. I'm not keen on teaching anyone to swim right now...:) Instead, we got really sandy and made forts and he wandered into the waves up to his knees...

We're eating pizza and salad right now, and I think I AM going to get away for a nap. He looks sleepy...and the house is spotless...