Babysitting dilemma

You know what really irks me?  Finding someone to baby sit my kids.  I am always the go to person others call when they need a sitter.  But when I need a sitter they are never willing to reciprocate.  It really burns me that I give and give and give but when I would like an evening out with just my husband suddenly no one is available.  Sure I have 3 boys but they are by far the best behaved little boys.  And I'm not just saying that because I'm biased, they really are great kids.  So if someone's reason for not wanting to watch them is because of their behavior then I don't want them to baby sit anyway because certainly they don't know my kids.  And I hate having to split my kids up just so I can enjoy some me time.  This usually happens when my oldest son plans on going to a friend's house to spend the night and I say "Hey, we're short one kid.  Maybe now we can get a sitter since there's only two of them."  This rarely works though and again we get nothing but excuses as to why they can't watch our kids.  I have been told that if we only had one kid sure they'd watch him, but not all three.  I ask how about two?  Again the answer is no.

So it seems that majority of the time the reason no one will baby sit my kids is not because of their behavior but because I have more then one child.  My question to them is how is it fair to dump your two children on me (when you certainly know I have three of my own) but won't take on at least two of mine.  That is usually met with stuttering and "um"ing and a hurried excuse to get off the phone.

Now I know what you're going to say, "Hire a babysitter."  Sure, I guess I could, if I wanted to pay $100 for some teenager I don't know or trust to come eat my food and get on my internet to ignore my children.  I can get on my internet and ignore my children for free.  There's no way I am going to pay a teenager more then  minimum wage to feed, pajama and put my kids to bed.  (And most of the time I feed my kids before the sitter gets here.)  They are only doing at most 2 hours of work.  After the kids are in bed they don't get up so the rest of the time it's filled with TV watching, pantry raiding and internet surfing - hardly worth whatever absurd dollar amount they asked for per hour.  I would much rather pay a friend or family member a respectable amount to baby sit.  I know them and I trust them.  They only need to agree to watch my kids and stop making excuses as to why they can't.