My Fantasy Life Has Been Interrupted by My Kids

I'm lying on a big comfortable king-sized bed, wearing pretty pajamas with no
food stains or holes in them, and my hair is clean and there's no one banging on
the bedroom door screaming, "MOM!!!!" I'm sleeping...actual r.e.m....and no
alarms and no telephones and no dreams of any kind........and......
BLAMMO! Someone slams into the bedroom door with his shoulder to open it,
because, you know...those damn door handles...well, they're just a decorative
option. "Hunh?...get the glue out of the cupboard...I'll make dinner...huh? What?"
I sit up in bed.
"Mom! Ismail won't give Randa the remote control back and he's not even
watching t.v.!" whines Samiya.
"That is NOT true. I turned the t.v. on an hour ago and so it's my turn to have
the remote!" shouts Ismail from the living room.
"REMOTE! I LOVE YOU, REMOTE! T.V.! REMOTE! STUPID ISMAIL! CALL THE
POLICE! ISMAIL'S JAIL!" screams Randa from behind her tear-stained face with
stripes of skin where her eyebrows once were as she plucked vertical stripes
when she found my tweezers sometime last night.
I crawl back under the sheet and pull the pillow over my face. Will death not
come quicker than this? Why now? I just went to bed at 6am. What time is it?
My mind is a tornado of questions that 30 seconds ago didn't exist. "What was
I dreaming about?" I wonder. The shouts are getting louder and the mother's
intuition is starting to kick in. I throw back the sheet and sit up, place my
glasses on my face so that I can find the bathroom without crashing into
furniture and shove my feet into my slippers. With very old, fat, and exhausted
cat-like reflexes I throw a hand up to catch the fist of Ismail that is about to
pound down on Samiya's head as he shouts, "TATTLE-TALE!" I spin him about
and shove him toward his room.
"Back to your room, Mister! And don't come out until I call you!" I continue
shuffling to the bathroom. "And don't throw anything out of the room at her."
I hug Randa to calm her down. "And don't call her nasty names from in there
either!" I yell out as an afterthought. "Samiya. You're grounded from talking
at all for the next 20 minutes because you tattled and minded their business
instead of your own."
"But I...." she starts. She gets the morning stink eye from me. She takes a big
huffy breath and stomps off to her room and slams the door at me. Whatever.
I think about how much my fantasies have changed over the years as I brush
my teeth with the door locked and use my "maternal noise-cloaking device"
(M.N.C.D.) deep in my brain to tune out the fight that has begun between
Ismail and Hamo in their bedroom.
I used to fantasize about my husband and me running hand in hand on the
beach or being wealthy jetsetters, not to mention the sexual fantasies. Now I
fantasize about clean, hole-free pajamas and napping without interruption!!?
What the hell happened to me?
The M.N.C.D. is starting to jam due to piercing screams and four-letter words
being yelled by the boy in the headlock and crazy, macho self assurances are
being shouted by the one clutching the owner of the foul mouth, "YEAH!
WHATCHA GONNA DO NOW? I'M THE TOUGH GUY. NOT YOU! I'M THE MAN."
I spit and rinse and run my fingers through my graying hair (time for a touch up)
and take a deep breath before going to pry apart the warring teenage factions
and face the reality of my life: Motherhood sucks sometimes.

"Time in a Bottle" (orig. published in 2007)

"If I could put time in bottle..." a novel idea by singer/songwriter Jim Croce. If time were something I could literally save, I wonder if I might be less frazzled and worn out than I am now. When running late, I could just shake well and pull out the cork adding the 5 minutes needed to my day in order to meet that particular appointment. Even if those 5 minutes were added via rewind or pause to all of life around me except me, I'd be able to get so much more accomplished. I'd get those last 5 minutes of desperately needed sleep or get that pan out of the oven before the smoke alarm goes off or to prevent whichever kid was about to fall down a flight of stairs or catch his brother's left hook to the head.
Of course, the danger in having a bottle of time would be in using it sparingly. With some of the hectic days that I have, I'd be pulling that cork out with my teeth and pouring out extra time left and right until I found that I'd aged two years in what everyone else thought was merely 24 hours. If that were to happen, I'd have to open up and pour on an extra hour every 6 real-time hours so that I could dye my hair to cover up the gray 4 times a real-life day.
Maybe time shouldn't be bottled, afterall. Maybe Jim Croce was an idiot, afterall. Or maybe he actually DID figure out how to bottle time and then couldn't handle it. He did end up committing suicide. Maybe I have too much time on my hands as it is. I seem to have time for this lame blog.

**(This post was originally published sometime back in 2007 on my old myspace acct.)