parenting by proxy

i love my babysitter. and i mean this in the general sense - not referring to one specific babysitter but to the lot of them - or whichever of them is willing to come this saturday night and stay with my kids in exchange for a large sum of money. i get excited just hearing the word - and not in any inappropriate way - although we have had at least one babysitter who was entirely too attractive (this is not a quality i look for when it comes to child care). don't get me wrong, i love my kids but i love getting away from them almost as much. and to know that they might be adequately cared for in my absence is a bonus.
as a kid, i remember when my sister and i would have a babysitter. it never occurred to me that my parents were probably more excited than we were. we would get to eat dairy queen and stay up late and watch fantasy island. in my eyes, the good babysitters just watched tv with us, while the bad ones tried to clean up and get us into bed. luckily for my kids, babysitters today feel no pressure to clean up at all - despite being paid $10 an hour - or really do much of anything other than text or talk on the phone. recently, and you may find this hard to believe but i swear on my babysitter it's true, we had a babysitter who got drunk and peed on our couch. as she stumbled out to leave, she insisted we keep the $50 we owed her for the evening. it was a selfless gesture, something you don't often see in teenage girls today.
thus far in my parenting career, i have only had sporadic babysitters and never anything too regular. i know that au pairs are all the rage among my friends with ample money. as much as i cherish my babysitter, i do not find an au pair arrangement appealing. the last thing i want is for my husband to be running into an attractive 18-year-old foreign girl in our kitchen at 2 a.m. i beat myself up enough as it is, i don't need that living in my house. the nanny is another optioin - the name alone sounds less attractive than au pair or babysitter but it also sounds more expensive. that being said, i guess i am destined to remain the primary caregiver in our home until my daughter is old enough to take over. and i am not sure how to gauge when that is - maybe when she is able to spend 5 minutes alone with her brother without it turning into a physical fight or perhaps when she is able to carry a plate all the way from the kitchen table to the sink. it could be a while. in the meantime, i will keep my day (and night) job.