Stuff Keeps Happening

Joel got promoted this week!
Gotta admit, I'm a sucker for a man in a suit.

More reliable hours and slightly better pay; though his schedule is now 12 hours off from what his previous schedule was.  Instead of waking up at 2pm to be to work at 4pm, he's waking up at 3am to be to work at 5am.  Adjusting our sleeping to fit this schedule has been interesting, to say the least, especially with a toddler in the mix.
Yesterday was the first day on this new schedule, but so far it's playing out like this:

I go to bed shortly after he leaves for work, since Nia's usually asleep by then.
She'll wake me up two or three times for feedings (she's still partially breastfed) before being up for the day, which is usually around the time Joel's getting home.  He and I have a few hours together before he goes to bed around 7:30pm, during which time he shoots things in Counterstrike and APB, then we have dinner and watch an episode of one of our shows - yesterday it was Lie to Me.
Once he goes to bed, I juggle doing artwork and occupying the tiny hooman, though lately it's been more of the latter than the former - she's become extremely demanding, and I'm REALLY looking forward to getting a car next week so I can enroll her in daycare; I would have before now, except that without a car there's no way to get her to and from.

In a few days, Joel's leaving for MA to get his license suspension taken care of.  I think it's so stupid that he has to physically appear in court; permission to Skype, your honor?  Honestly, the fine he'll have to pay is probably less than half what the plane tickets to get there cost. Really could have used that $500 towards getting a nicer car; so instead of $1500 we'd have $2k to work with.  But no. The court has to act like we're still in the 19th century or something.

*deep breath*

Anyway.  Daycare.  Ugh.

On one hand, Nia really needs to be socialized; she needs the company of other kids, and other caretakers. She's at that age where it's really important.  On the other hand... people are, more often than not in my experience, garbage.  Especially other people's children.  I've probably bitched about the kids around here in this blog once already; I read the news, I read things on the internet too, and a lot of the things I see or hear about really sincerely worry me about the quality of the culture my daughter is going to grow up being exposed to.

There's only so much parents can do to prepare their children for this brutal world, especially if everyone around them are the moral equivalents of Rush Limbaugh or Madonna.

How do you explain to your child that no matter what kind of person she is, someone out there will always hate her?  How do you explain that for every good person in the world, there's a malicious one?  I suppose all parents, on some level, want to insulate their children from reality, want them to learn from their mistakes before they go and make their own.

But of course it's an impossible dream.

Unless you're Amish or something.