I stink at selling anything, ever.

I'm waiting for a woman to come to the house this morning to see whether she should trust me with her son before and after school, as she is returning to work.

Should the house have an honest, lived-in, "don't sweat the small stuff" look? What's the acceptable amount of crumbs crunching beneath ones feet before it goes from "comfy" to "condemned"? If the house looks immaculate, I don't think a kid would want to hang out here. Bare minimum, I should probably have a shower and get out of the flannels, maybe try to make my hair lie down and behave. Its grown just to that hedge-hoggy stage now. Speaking of lying down and behaving- how do I give the kids a crash course in making eye contact with strangers, saying "hello", and looking like they've turned out relatively human-like under my care?

What I need is a walk-in closet that I could just shove several hundred toys and some miscellaneous furiture into. I have the master bedroom, which is currently doubling as "sanctuary" and "storage". It's easy for Oprah to go on about the proper use of bedrooms, but come on, how many actual walk-in closets are in her mansions? And whenever she wants to minimize, all she has to do is have on of those "My favorite things" shows, and give a couple of million of things away.

And then there's the whole issue of me not looking like an idiot. Once when I was asked about my policy on sick kids my reply was that short of kids sweating or puking blood, I was pretty easy going. Now, that sounded intelligent. I'm usually worried that people will ask about "policies" at all and I'll just start staring blankly and say- "Duh.... I dunno- whaddya mean?"

Maybe I should just come up with some basics:
Do not send your child with knives, hives, or bags of candy. (unless he is willing to share)
Please pay me on time, otherwise I'm likely to say something like: "Yeah, I know sometimes it gets rough, just pay me half, or don't pay me at all. I'm just doing this for fun anyway" After that I'll probably have to tattoo "stupid" on my forehead. Or maybe "Stoopid".
It is required that your child have an unnatural craving for chocolate milk, and nutella spread. So far, nearly every child who has crossed my threshold has met this criteria.

Of course, if I were actually good at marketing, would I really be working for pennies a day? I guess I'll go with the "comfortable, homey, relatively safe, and always loved" theme.

God bless us, every one.