The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

The butler did it--at least it would be nice if he did

By Ingrid McCleary

If you called our home, you'd hear the following message delivered with a decidedly proper English accent:

"Hello, this is Jeeves the butler, taking messages for Bill McCleary's Horseshoeing and Ingrid McCleary. They cannot be disturbed at the moment; heaven knows they're disturbed enough already. So if you'd kindly leave your name, number, and message at the sound of the beep, I'll have them return your call 'toot sweet.' "

It's Bill's voice that transforms from Jeeves to Sigmund Freud to Bart the cowpoke to Santa Claus. He changes it quarterly to entertain his customers. The message is humorous and often embraces hyperbole. It's not meant to be taken seriously. But when I was listening to messages the other day, it occurred to me that we really needed Jeeves--or someone like him.

I announced to my family later, "What we need is a third parent. A maid, butler, or handyman won't suffice because they do things for the house, not things that require a parent's touch."

I know what popular author and radio talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger would say if I told her every large family needed three parents: Put your children first. Always have one parent at home, at least until the youngest is in school. Change your priorities. If you have to earn less to be at home more, then learn to do with less.

Well, we did rearrange our schedule. One of us is home all the time. My kids are all in school. Those bases were covered. It's the school functions and the after-school activities that are sending our weeknights and weekends into a tailspin.

On Saturdays, I sprawl on the soggy grass at Raynor Park and watch my youngest sweat through his soccer game. On Sundays, I sit in the bleachers at the Peterson/Palmer Complex watching my eldest son, twice his normal bulk in his football uniform, slam his way into another win. My daughter's meets fall on the same days. Still, these are the fun parts, a chance for us to see the skills cultivated in practice take flight.

The not-so-fun parts are those two-, three-, five-times-a-week practices. I schlep our soccer player to Stocklmeir-Ortega Elementary School, then race back to taxi our football player to the other side of town, at Fair Oaks Park. Luckily, our cross-country/varsity soccer player provides her own transportation (her feet). Between the practices and the subsequent games, I figure I've hit nearly every school and park in Sunnyvale.

Somewhere in the above, I prepare dinner then rush to my own exercise class, or to the schools for meetings and other school functions (like three back-to-back back-to-school nights).

Mind you, I'm only dropping them off. Bill picks them up. And somewhere between coming home, dinner, and pickups, he has to call his customers.

The weekly games provide us with another exercise in strategic planning because these occur anywhere from Sunnyvale to San Jose, Santa Cruz, Daly City, Half Moon Bay and San Francisco. Toss in different start and stop times and you've got enough to make an air-flight controller sweat.

But our kids are our first priority. So we shuttle them to practices, volunteer for school activities, attend their games. Consequently, chores normally delegated to weekends remain undone: necessary tasks like mending the rabbit cage (so we don't end up with 200 rabbits by winter) and arranging for our roof replacement (so we can keep the rain where it belongs--outside).

Yes, hiring a handyman would work. But that means paying someone else. And earning more money means less time at home, which takes us away from our first priority. See what I mean?

I'd better get back to my scheduling, tout de suite. Hmmm--floodlights would give us extra daylight hours; how much sleep is really necessary? Does Sunnyvale have a 24-hour hardware store?

Ingrid McCleary is a Sunnyvale resident and a columnist for The Sun.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, September 24, 1997.
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