I'm hiding in my bedroom. Seeing that on the digital page before me makes me shake my head in shame.
I'm 30 years old and I'm actually hiding in my bedroom. Thinking in the same thought patterns I did when I was grounded to my bedroom as a child.
If I went downstairs and didn't make a sound, could I get a book I want to read?
If I made it to the living room, I could get to the pantry for a snack, what do I have in there? The kitchen is a no-go too risky for being spotted.
No there aren't members of ETA or the PKK in my house, there are however, children (which at times can be equally terrifying).
In December (right about the last time of the last entry) I left the dating circuit when I found someone who I didn't want to run away from screaming; or run right to my my computer to blog about. But this someone did have something that I said I'd always wanted, and had never had before... 3 kids.
Fast forward a few months and we started living together and I began working from home rather than spending 2 hours a day commuting to my office 70 miles north of where we live.
Since my bedroom is also my home office, it's off limits while I'm working and after working today I quietly shut down my computer, put away our laundry and sat down with my computer for the first time in 9 months.
It's not that I don't like the kids or that they aren't a lot of fun, they certainly can be, and when they say things like "what does meka leka high like a tiny ho mean?" (Peewee's Playhouse reference) or when the middle child asked when they pulled in to the parking lot of my office in Grand Forks N.D., (I work for a big .com company) "are we on the internet now?" my heart does kinda melt and along with my composure.
I am now one of those people who starts conversations and changes the subject with the phrase "you'll never guess what the kids said or did today."
But along with the cute questions come the sassy attitudes when they don't like an answer and whining and crying and messes. Oh my yes, the messes. Tiny bits of paper all over the rest of the house because they get stuck to socks and then tracked to other rooms, not just the table where the cutting was done (and the paper and scissors still wait to be put away from).
Even if I saw the cutting take place, and scissors and paper in their hot little hands, when it comes to picking up the mess, the response is the same "it's not mine." The wrappers from candy, the pieces of a Lego project, the hexbugs, the beads, it never ends, it winds up in every move of the house until it gets picked up through nagging or sheer exasperation by me or my boyfriend one way or the other the mess is created every day.
My room has become my safe haven, the one clean(ish) room in the house where I don't have to look at someone else's mess or listen to 'can I's' or 'I wants' and I don't have to hear the echo of my mother's voice in my own saying the same frustrated parental catchphrases I heard as a child... "It looks like you stirred your drawers with a stick," or "I'm going to stop buying these toys if you don't take care of them." or the one word that sums up the whole new experience...Karma.
