When I was 17 it was a very good year... leave it to the smooth sounds of Frank Sinatra to make your afternoon. I love that song, it's one of those songs that you don't listen to often, but when you do you remember how much you love it. Yes, it's one of "those." So as promised, I am updating. Not much has really happened. I'm planning on going down to Charlottesville tomorrow to surprise a friend - it should be fun. The road to Charlottesville is so pretty... talk about the epitome of a scenic route. It's I-29 all the way down for a little over an hour so it's pretty easy to drive as well. Horray for Country roads! :Þ

This morning I had to go to work... well kinda but I didn't go to bed until 4am so the alarm going off at 9:30 wasn't the best experience ever. But I got up anyway and took the kid to the Sport and Health Club so he could play tennis all day and now I'm not really doing much of anything. I think I have the best job of all time. I'm a nanny-ish person to 10 and 12 year old brothers. It's kind of sad though because it seems like their parents neglect them. - Maybe neglect isn't the word, but I mean we live in the suburbs so it's not unusual for kids to have working parents. It's just really sad in this case because their dad is out of the country traveling 3 weeks out of every month so they barely get to see him and their mom doesn't really come home until 8ish so they don't even get to eat dinner together. I feel bad for them - one of the little boys goes to a prep school with a population of 50 or so kids and that's unfortunate because he doesn't get to meet a lot of people for really experience everything that his brother (who is in public school) does. So anyway, she hired me to just kind of be there with them and keep them company and make sure they don't burn the house down. It's a good job seeing as they're not even here half the time. I remember one time making easy mac for them because the cook their mom hired didn't make enough food for the whole week and they almost died. They were like, "Mary, we haven't had a homecooked meal in so long." All I did was add water and put it in the microwave... imagine what whould have happened if I made real mac and cheese. And that's another thing, sure their parents can be millionaires and buy the best of everything for their children, put them in the best schools, buy their way into college, have maids clean the house and do laundry, or have a cook come every week... but if the parents aren't there - none of that matters. They don't lead normal lives and they don't learn the lessons that other children get to learn from their parents and that's what disturbs me. Even though it shouldn't matter to me, it's just really sad to see first hand that people can treat their kids this way and believe that money is a substitute for love because it's not. I'm surprised these kids are so well-behaved. They can practically do whatever they want to - no one will stop them especially not their parents, but they have the best manners and they listen. I think the parents just got really lucky because they could have turned out to be spoiled jerks but they're very modest and that's what I like about them. This town is so picture perfect (horray planned communities) and whenever you mention the town's name everybody is like oh my god - that town is amazing. - If only people knew what went on behind the scenes and if only the people here didn't live in denial and stopped playing pretend. Just because everything looks perfect doesn't mean that it is.