Two days later at 2 a.m., the burglar alarms went off. I plowed into Maggie's room, and noticed a huge white van parked outside the house. Having heard enough stories about suburban robberies, I immediately called my friends the police.

In the meantime, Maggie and I piled all the chairs, bureaus, and assembled baby toys against the door, having decided that hiding in the closet would only scare us further.

Suddenly a police officer asked if I was there, and if so did I know someone named Sharon. Confused, I answered yes, whereupon the police asked me to come downstairs. After a jumbled series of conversations, I learned that Sharon had set off the alarm by running into my basement, which I had forgotten to lock, when she was parking her van in front of my house and a man approached her.

After the police left, the phone rang. It was the family's housekeeper, wanting to know why I was having a wild party. She said that she had just met a friend of mine, who said he was coming over. I frantically asked her who he was and she said he was tall, thin, and bearded. So I hung up, and called the police again--grabbing a knife out of the kitchen.

By the time the police came, I was ready for a nervous breakdown. We learned that the housekeeper had been called by the alarm company when the alarm went off. Mad that I was staying in the house, she had decided to scare me. Explanations or no explanations, this was the last straw; the police had to stay an extra hour to calm me and my friend down.

It was then that I started counting the days until I could move out. When the family finally returned, I was packed and ready to go to my grandmother's. I told them about the burglar alarm fiasco, and they chuckled when I told them to fire their housekeeper. The toddler immediately recognized me and wanted to go outside and swing, but the now eight-month-old baby had changed so much that I didn't recognize her and she didn't recognize me. When I tried to hold her, she screamed and grabbed for her mother. Some thanks, I thought, for being such a good babysitter; but then I swallowed my pride. What the hell: I never wanted to see her again either