By some care.com miracle, we wound up with an AMAZING nanny for our kids while they’ve been out of school. She was vastly overqualified to watch my children, but she was in Kansas City for her husband’s job this summer and was looking for a summer childcare gig. She is from Utah, which is apparently a land of mountains, no humidity and Mormons.
It didn’t take long to realize she was a foreigner living in a foreign land, and I realized it was my duty to teacher her the ways of midwestern summers. Some topics we had to cover:
Humidity
A friend of mine once described humidity as “the air giving you a hug.” (She lived in Ohio before moving to Colorado and now misses living in air that can best be described as “moist.”) I could tell the humidity was new for our nanny when she cut about 10 inches off her hair in her first week here. She has beautiful hair, but I guarantee you she realized it was more beautiful in Utah. Missouri summer means your hair tries to lift off your head and curl in the most unflattering way possible in the unending battle of white women vs. frizz. But hey, she didn’t have to spend any money on lotion or Chapstick while she was here.
Our nanny also lamented that in Utah, it gets plenty hot, but you actually find relief in the shade. She soon realized that here it is just as soupy under the tree as it is in an open field.
Wildlife
Apparently, Kansas City is a verdant summer paradise compared to Utah. We’ve had much more rain than usual this summer, but the nanny said everything is dry and dead this time of year in her home town. She said she was shocked to see so many squirrels, rabbits and other fauna hopping about all the time. She couldn’t believe our weekly raccoons vs. trash battle (a whole blog for another day). She said they just don’t have any cute, furry, destructive wildlife scampering about in southern Utah in the summer.
She also got introduced to another less-cute and less-visible Kansas City native: the chigger. She was complaining of really itchy bites all over her feet and ankles, and I had to introduce her to this mite with the name of a racist redneck. I also told her the cure for chigger bites that has long circulated in the community: to put clear nail polish over them because then those little suckers that have established squatters rights under your skin can’t breathe anymore and die. I don’t know if that really works, but it is passed down from generation to generation of midwesterners. (Interestingly, clear nail polish also has been passed down as the cure for runs in pantyhose.)
She’d also never had to deal with ticks before or the higher amount of mosquitoes. I’m beginning to think we may have gotten the short end of the stick here in Kansas City … but our ovens cook faster down here closer to sea level!
Tornadoes and the warning sirens thereof
At about 10:30 a.m. on the first Wednesday of the month in June, I texted her in a panic. The monthly tornado siren test was due to happen at 11, and I realized she would probably think an air raid was about to go down. We live pretty close to the sirens, and I didn’t want her to think bombs were about to drop on the children. I advised her this siren testing would recur on a monthly basis (unless it’s stormy at 11 a.m. on the first Wednesday, and then emergency management doesn’t want to confuse people into thinking it’s a legit tornado, and they schedule it for the second Wednesday, and I can see how this can get confusing if you’re not used to it). I also told her to go to a basement if a tornado does happen. Her apartment didn’t have one, so we drove home the lowest-interior-area-with-no-windows location.
She also got a first-hand look at flash flooding. Turn around, don’t drown, mountain friends!
Aldi
The nanny did not have the world’s best discount grocer where she lived in Utah. Friends out west, I am so, so, sorry. They’re expanding like crazy in Kansas City (a new one is opening less than a mile from my house!), and I hope they come to you soon. Then you, too, can enjoy all the savings a quarter-deposit on a grocery cart can buy on tons of delicious foods at prices that will make you mad when you are at regular grocery stores. I hope the Aldi boom follows our sweet nanny back to Utah.
School starts for the kids next week, and our wonderful nanny goes back to Utah this weekend. Our whole family will miss her terribly. But she goes back with a new cultural awareness of Kansas City and its summer climate. She previously spent a couple years in England on her Mormon mission, but I’m sure this will go down in her memory as the most exotic and enjoyable place she has ever lived.
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