She is very nice! She is so wholesome! Her whole family hang out ALL THE TIME together in the sitting room at home! They hate privacy, in fact, what is privacy? They never just sit in their rooms or need any time off from family life! They love to chat! All the time! Au pair is in most ways adorable and working through some Big Themes (you know, just turning from a teen into a proper 20something - she is actually a 20something but feels more like a teen/Anne of Green Gables due to aforesaid Walton-like home life) and follows me around wanting to Discuss It All*.
*I really get this but this is why I lived with a bunch of like-minded peers at this age and Discussed It All nightly over wine and fags and music etc.
Clearly I am a fucked up individual with a bitter stonelike heart and a fractured family background, but to be fair all of my other au pairs have been same and have tacitly understood 'be an au pair and be like a member of the family' to mean 'come and provide reasonably well-paid childcare for not too many hours and spend the rest of your time out on the razzle and/or establishing some kind of online empire from your room, where we never enter.'
This one I think is so sweet that she actually wants to BE one of the family and follows me around talking. Also she has the nicest heart and is a good egg but very dappy, and so I feel like her best friend/mom/therapist in one (in fairness her mom is also her best friend and therapist, and also lives in my home via constant skype/video link.) God I'm such a bitch. i just have nothing. left. emotionally. to give. at the end of the day with work/kids/DH away all week.
Anyway, the result of all this is that I lie with the kids until they're asleep, which does take ages due to one of them having a slight sleep issue, then it's ME who skulks off to my room and scurries about furtively. Meanwhile, au pair has whole run of sitting room and kitchen EVERY WEEK NIGHT.
I would say something, but as I was thinking how best to, she was telling me something other about her truly heinous ex employers (they really were very exploitative) and she said, 'And another thing, Jill would be like really firmly and meanly, "Jack and I really need to have a couples date night. Can you go hang out in your room?" Isn't that AWFUL? They were so mean, I would sit in my room all on my own and cry.' And I was like, 'God, that's awful, what a bitch.' And now I'm all 'I. AGREE. WITH JILLLLLLL.' Aargh.
So I am sitting in my room all alone and almost crying (not really) and she is ensconced on my nice sofa in my sitting room. I mean, she would love it if I came down and we, I don't know, watched Dirty Dancing and made s'mores but I just can't! I need space.
She is so lovely, it's like kicking a (quite thick-skinned) puppy!
She is very nice and trustworthy and yes, I am very lucky and we are 3/3 the favourite employers and not at all mean. I mean I really can't think of a way to say, 'sometimes it would be awesome if you wanted to hang out in your room', I know that. I just needed to rant.
If cherry of the lurking au pair could come and commiserate that'd be nice.