place exasperated sigh here

The past couple of weeks I've been looking at daycare centers. I figured it might be a good idea to put Oona in daycare a couple times a week so I'm not feeling so constantly overwhelmed. I might be able to chip away at my long 'to do' list and it would make it infinitely easier when I got slammed with a bunch of freelance work at once. I also though it would be good for Oona to socialize with kids her age. But I'm flabbergasted at the quality of the centers I've visited and one of these places is a center a few of our friends have used (which has a basement 'play area' for rainy days that's scarier than the basement in 'Blair Witch Project'). Every place has been filthy - stained, grubby carpets covered with litter, most places have smelled. Today's gem reeked of that cloying cherry scent found in porta potties that does little to disguise the smell of poop. The place I visited today was HORRIBLE! Every surface in the toddler room was covered in grime, crayon scribbles or, frequently, both. I felt like being real snarky and saying 'Oh you shouldn't have cleaned up just for me.' but I didn't. To be honest, as soon as I entered most of the places I've visited these past two weeks I knew I'd never leave Oona there but I always feel rude to just leave so I take the tour and ask some questions and then tell them I'm looking around and will get back to them in a week or so. I feel so bad for the kids in these centers. These are the daycare centers that we can afford, they're are other places, probably better, cleaner but it's prohibitively expensive and it's not right that only wealthy people should get quality daycare. These visits at daycare centers make me feel great about the babysitting area at the gym, which is spotless and the girl that watches my children most often is great with them. There's a church I drop Oona off at occasionally that's also clean and is well supervised but it's a 25 minute drive just to get out there so it's not exactly the most convienent daycare available. When we were in a lower tax bracket and before Oona was born I used to put Owen in a daycare that was in a really bad section of town, we used to nervously joke that it was ghetto daycare. But that place was always clean, didn't smell bad and the women that worked there were wonderful with Owen. Unfortunately the center shut down. I'd love to have a few hours a couple times a week to myself so I could clean, cook, iron during daylight hours (now I only do it when the kids are asleep and that's basically the last thing I want to do at the end of the day), see doctors without Oona trying to get into the biohazard needle box, go shopping perhaps. Maybe I could find someone to come to our house a couple times a week, maybe a pediatric resident looking for some pin money.