All of My Love -- A Bedtime Story

Mr. Peculiar and I work non-traditional schedules. I'm on duty nights, weekends and holidays. Mr. Peculiar has weekends off but switches between day, swing and graveyard shifts. We are currently both working nights; it's arduous to say the least.

This type of schedule can be problematic for us parents. What is one to do with the children? Life would be much easier if we had relatives in town. But we don't. It'd be great if we could afford a nanny. But we can't and won't.

We briefly considered leaving the kids alone but quickly thought better of it after a night of mayhem where even parental authority wasn't enough to keep all h*ll from breaking loose (if you've seen my marbles let me know!).

Luckily we have amazing friends who are willing to shelter our children. This keeps them from destroying a) our house and b) each other. And it keeps me from losing any more marbles.

This care does not, however, keep middle daughter from being sad. She misses me and wants me home when I'm at work (of course when I am home the term mother is synonymous with persona non grata but that's a different story). The other kids miss us too but not with the same intractable longing as Middle.

Anyway the other day we saw a Hallmark commercial for recordable books. Ah - the perfect solution! I'll put my voice to a story, pack it off for the overnighter and contented bliss will prevail. Not.

You see these books cost upwards of $100.00. And like it or not the Peculiar Household is on a very strict budget. Expensive books are not part of our balance sheet. Another solution was in order ... one that didn't drain our hemorrhaging bank account.

Then the light bulb went off. I have a computer (a Mac, a Mac, a Mac -- I love my Mac). My lovely computer has a web cam and a recording feature. So what did I do? I made a little movie; me reading a book. And I'm so hip that I uploaded it to YouTube.

Now the next time my twenty-first century progeny have a sleepover they can get online for their bedtime story. Total cost? Zero dollars and zero cents. (And no I'm not counting the cost of my computer because I would have bought it with or without that little YouTube feature).

For those who are interested the video is posted below. I'll not list all the ways it embarrasses me.

Happy Love Thursday and Frugal Friday! Here is all of (or Olive) my love.