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babysitting

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2009.02.28

It's always a pleasure to babysit when Mari's off on errands or doing something like her singing lessons. Ken and I have come a long way from the less than perfect first incident of his being under my sole care. Now we can play with toys together (he's learned to assemble a few pieces of Duplo, for instane) and generally pass the time in a constructive manner. Kenny can even play with toys on his own, which is great.

Speaking of babysitting, I was surprised to learn today what it costs to hire a babysitter in Tokyo. It's about ¥2500 and hour, which is more than $CA30! By comparison, in the late 80's I earned all of $2/hour babysitting.

rand()m quote

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

—Roald Dahl