5 57 pm

I get off in a half hour. We've just finished homework, reading, and piano practice. Now they have a little time to play.

Remember how I mentioned that communication issue? Well, the girls mentioned that they might be spending the summer abroad, so I asked mom and she confirmed. Voila! I have to find a new job for the summer.

I don't think people in the rest of the country (and world) really get the expense of living here. We watched the film The House of Sand and Fog (which we hated), and we noted that they priced a local home for ~$175,000 when it probably goes for four times that. Matthew surmised that they lowered the cost so that it wouldn't be distracting to audience outside California and New York.

Anyway, for prespective, the townhomes on our street sold for $850,000. They were over 2,000 sqare feet, but you have shared walls and you don't get your own little backyard. I was appalled.

Town and Country is one of the few local nanny placement agencies with the balls to list salaries on their site. Currently, nannies go for $15-$20 an hour. I'm hoping to find one that pays higher than that, because we *really* want to buy a home this year and we need every penny.

We got advice from a fancy shmancy financial advisor (friend of a friend), who said not to buy a home now (apparently he buys into the "housing bubble" theory), but quite frankly, we both want the house for the lifestyle, not the investment. We want to be able to paint our walls, modify things, have home-improvement projects, and have a real garden. If it takes a little longer for the house's value to go up, so be it. It has to be better than throwing away rent every month. (For further reference, all of the two bedroom places we looked at in Silicon Valley went for around $1,600 a month in rent, but we got ours at a steal for $1,200 a month. Our current place is about 750 square feet.)

8 52 pm

At that point, one of my girls hobbled out wearink a hooded cloak and told me in an "old person" voice I was to report to a room in the back where I was going to have my fortune read. The psychic amazingly knew that I had a husband named Matthew. She predicted that I will have five children, drive a tow truck, and live in a shack. When I pouted about living in a schack, she then predicted I would live in "a house called shack." When I got home I told Matthew that when we bought a place, it would be named Shaq.

So the reason I brought I my whole summer job predicament, is because I thought it might be a possible explanation for the nightmare I had last night.