#81, Kristy and Mr. Mom

This book starts out with Kristy at home on a snowy Saturday. I believe this Saturday is probably in early January, but if that's the case the timeline in this book does not exactly work out. It could also be in mid-late December, but Christmas is never mentioned, and the kids are always going to school, so I don't think so. It does have to be in one of those months because Karen and Andrew are with their mother and arrive at the Big House in February. (Karen and Andrew spend alternating months with each parent but the months rotate year to year so they spend December and January with the same parent.)

Kristy's family is busy with wacky shenanigans so that we will all know that Kristy's family is big and difficult to keep track of. Watson and Charlie are trying to get the car unstuck from a patch of ice. Emily is watching TV and eating dry Cocoa Puffs out of a bowl. Nannie is dusting the downstairs and dancing. David Michael is practicing his part in a community theater production. He's into acting in a lot of the Little Sister books but this is one of the few times it's mentioned in the regular series. The book tells us that he got bitten by the acting bug after being a Winkie in his school's production of (what else?) The Wizard of Oz.

At Monday's club meeting, Kristy tells us that Dawn's mother "is pretty casual (some people might even call her a bit of an absent-minded slob). She'll put the wrench in the refrigerator and the milk in the tool box." I don't know how Sharon's family manages to store any food with all the weird stuff she allegedly stuffs into her refrigerator. Kristy also describes Claudia's current style:

This winter Claud's been into hats. She buys old hats in thrift stores and covers them in sequins, buttons, and really outrageous feathers. Usually she wears them with one of her super-trendy outfits, like a red long underwear shirt with tiny black-and-white polka dot suspenders, pinstripe trousers, and ruby sequined slippers.

 That is super-trendy indeed, if you live in Stoneybrook.

When Kristy gets home from the meeting, Watson is shoveling the walk. Kristy offers to finish up if he goes in and tosses a pizza in the oven. Watson agrees to this but then instead of holding up his half of the bargain and putting in a pizza, he has a heart attack on the front porch. Kristy calls 911, and Kristy's mom and Nannie ride to the hospital with Watson, leaving Kristy in charge of the kids. Kristy calls Watson's ex-wife to tell her what happened, and Lisa offers that she and Seth could come over and sit with her, but Kristy declines, which is probably a relief to Lisa because it would have to be kind of awkward to sit in her ex's house with his new wife's things in it. Kristy instead invites Shannon, Mary Anne, and Dawn over. This is the BSC, so instead of doing actual teenage things like sitting around worrying and getting more worked up, they get the kids ready for bed and pack school lunches for the next day. Dawn puts herself in charge of making the lunches and she makes a big plate of three different kinds of sandwiches so everyone will have a choice. This seems inefficient to me. It's not even like she just used different kinds of lunch meat. The choices are tuna, ham and cheese, or peanut butter and jelly. She also packs baggies of chips and an apple for each person and manages not to be judgmental about the relative healthfulness of potato chips. Nannie arrives home and says that Watson's heart attack was mild and he is expected to recover fully.

Kristy visits Watson in the hospital and is a little scared by all the machines he is hooked up to. Watson is in the hospital for about a week and is released that Sunday. The family has a welcome home party for him. That Tuesday, Kristy babysits for Karen and Andrew. The following weekend, they have a special family dinner and all the kids wear their nicest clothes. Watson announces that he is going to quit his job and stay home full time. This announcement takes everyone by surprise.

The next morning Watson is up early and makes breakfast for everyone while wearing a red striped apron and a white chef's hat. This is the scene pictured on the cover, except that David Michael is not wearing his full rooster costume in the text. Watson makes dinner every night that week except for Thursday. Nannie seems to be spending more time in her room. The next week, Watson takes Kristy to a BSC meeting and while she is at the meeting, he goes and buys a single pizza to feed 8 people, including two teenage boys, for dinner. When they get home Nannie has cooked pasta and is pissy about the pizza. Kristy suggests they can freeze the pizza and eat it the next night, but Emily and David Michael have their hearts set on pizza. If they're going to eat it the next night, why do they need to freeze it? Couldn't it just be refrigerated? Nannie snaps that they can freeze the pasta instead but you can't really freeze pasta so she'll just throw it away. They decide that the kids will eat pizza and the adults can eat pasta, but, again, how was Watson planning to feed eight people with a single pizza anyway?

After that evening, Nannie and Watson check with each other before planning meals, and they settle into a routine. Then on a Thursday night, Nannie blindsides everyone by announcing that she is going to move into her own apartment in two days' time because she feels unneeded now that Watson is making some meals. As she is moving she mentions not to forget that Karen and Andrew will be arriving the next day.

Okay, if the first day of this book was the 3rd of January, then this timeline works out, but just barely, and it means that Nannie decides to move out, finds a place, and signs a lease all within 11 days of Watson's announcement. Which makes Nannie seem frankly rather impulsive and odd.

After a week, everything falls apart, and there is a terrible day where Emily is sick and Karen is annoying and Kristy's mom wants to hire a housekeeper. Karen begs Kristy to play Let's All Come In with her, but Kristy doesn't have time. Kristy visits Nannie and tells her that things have all gone to hell in a handbasket, and Nannie moves back in three days later. Which, really? All of this could have been avoided if Nannie and Watson had talked at all, and he had said they still wanted Nannie to stay and she had not stomped off to her own house like an angry child. She probably had to pay a significant amount of money for breaking her lease after a week and a half.

The subplot in this book is that Mrs. Marshall keeps dumping extra kids on her sitter when they come over, and only paying them for her two children. This is clearly unsafe for the children and unfair to the sitter, and is against the club rules, which state that two sitters must be sent for more than four children. This rule is pretty ridiculous and is also often ignored for plot purposes if the sitters want to gather a huge group of children for whatever reason. In the end, Kristy calls Mrs. Marshall who apologizes for springing the extra children on them, and then Kristy babysits Nina and Elanor and feeds them grilled cheese sandwiches. They cut them into circles (which is the wrong way to eat them but whatever) and Kristy says they can make faces on them by attaching raisins with small glops of peanut butter. This sounds revolting to me and also to Nina Marshall. Then Kristy and the kids spend the rest of the meal trying to come up with the grossest food combinations. This is something that pops up from time to time in the books and I don't understand why it is allegedly so much fun and always leaves the participants giggling like loons. Then again, I'm given to understand that not everyone can make themselves throw up just by thinking about foods that might be gross or weird feeling, so perhaps I am not the most qualified person to judge.

Overall, I would say that this is one of the more solid books in the later series, even if the timeline is a little off. My rating: 7/10.