Would You Rather...

If you had the financial means, would you rather have full-time household help (like, a person to pick up ALL your crap and mop all your floors and dust your flipping ceiling fan blades all the time) or a driver? (It should go without saying that the driver would both buckle a baby into those damn car seats AND carry the flipping car seat thing to and from the car)

For me, the answer is definitely driver. Driver!

On days like today, where snowy weather increases my driving anxiety to epic proportions, I think about how different my life would be with a driver. I could have actually gone to Dozen for my interview (for the article I'm writing about cupcakes) for one thing. I wouldn't feel worried about getting to the gym tomorrow for another!

And I could go to the Strip (when there aren't sinkholes) any time I wanted with a driver to parallel park for me. It's like my ultimate fantasy. "Driver," I'd say, "let's go to the fish store." Or the biscotti place. Or the tea shop. Or even Squirrel Hill! I never go to Squirrel Hill because there's nowhere to park.

My friend Manidis once told me it was extremely sad and terrible that I plan my day around parallel parking. She can't believe that I sometimes don't go places because of the lack of convenient parking. I mean, some of these locations expect you to parallel park on the left on one-way streets! Sheesh! If she were a true friend, she'd stop trying to teach me to park more confidently and just hire me a driver.

Obviously, when it gets nice out again and my bike, Etienne, has air in her tires, I will realize this is a ridiculous fantasy and switch over to wanting the full-time domestic help to pick up after my husband. But for now, I dream of Morgan Freeman beeping the horn as he scrapes snow off the Mazda for me.