And the Turmoil Goes On

I’ve been pretty busy over the last few weeks. The Grand Purge was followed by Fall Break, during which my children and I came down with a horrid and tenacious respiratory virus… and my husband discovered that a suspicious mole on his leg was actually a melanoma.

Good times!

The melanoma discovery was quickly followed by surgery to make sure it hadn’t spread. A few days later, the reports came in and we learned that the surrounding skin was clear and cancer-free, thank God. Dennis celebrated the good news by promptly falling down the garage stairs, breaking a toe and bruising a kidney. These days, he stumbles around the house in an orthopedic shoe to the strains of a chorus of coughing and hacking from the rest of us.

Throughout all this, I’ve been covering the presidential debates for CafeMom and making appearances on HLN to give the “mom perspective” on the election. Since HLN is in Atlanta, it’s a pretty easy drive for me from Nashville- and then there’s the added bonus that I get to spend the night with my parents and grandmother. I have to admit that going to the studio, getting pretty-fied in hair and makeup and appearing on a cable news network has been really fun and gratifying.

But I also have to admit that I loved staying home yesterday and doing those same appearances for HLN via Skype, straight from my kitchen table. There’s nothing like being on national television without having to leave the house!

The first two Skype interviews were during school hours and went smoothly. The third was going to be a bit of a challenge, though, since the kids would be home from school. I briefly thought about sending them to the neighbor’s house for a few minutes until I was done, but in the end I figured they were old enough to handle playing quietly upstairs for a few minutes. I even told eight-year-old Punky I’d pay her five dollars in babysitting money if she could manage to keep her five-year-old brother occupied the whole time. Sounds pretty simple, right?

Wrong.

So wrong.

“I know what we’ll do, Bruiser,” Punky said after I had laid out my plan on the way home from school. “We’ll play school and I’ll help you do your homework.”

“No,” Bruiser said stoutly. “I only play school with Mommy.”

“But I want to play school,” Punky whined. “And you have to do whatever I say because I’ll be your babysitter.”

“No!” Bruiser shot back. “I won’t!”

“Okay, Punky,” I said patiently. “Part of what a babysitter does is play whatever the kids want to play. Because she wants to keep the kids happy. Your favorite babysitters all do that, right? So I was thinking you and Bruiser could go up in his room and play with his Imaginext toys for a few minutes, until I’m done.”

“Yeah!” Bruiser said happily. “That’s what we’ll do!”

“No!” Punky said. “I hate playing with those toys!”

I sighed in frustration. This was not going at all as I had planned.

“Just do something to keep him quiet,” I said. “And in exchange, you’ll receive a significant amount of money that will enable you to BUY STUFF.”

Punky thought for a moment. “But what if I can’t keep him quiet?” she asked.

“If you can’t keep him quiet, then I will be humiliated on national television and I will be very, very disappointed,” I said. This didn’t seem to faze her. “People will be shocked and upset and my career will be OVER,” I elaborated. “And I will cry and probably never feel like baking cookies ever again.”

Punky gazed steadily back at me. She wasn’t buying a word of it. The kid knows me too well. “But what if he breaks a leg or something?” she asked. “What am I supposed to do then? Come down and tell you, or just stay upstairs with my poor crying brother and his broken leg?”

I thought for a moment. The chances of my son breaking a leg while playing quietly in his room with his sister for 15 minutes were pretty slim.

“Just stay up there,” I said. She gasped.

“It’s not going to happen,” I said. “He’s not going to break his leg. It’s just 15 minutes, okay? Pleeeeeeeeeease?”

“Okay, I’ll do it,” she said, pouting.

Suddenly, this wasn’t looking like such a great plan.

One hour later, I sent the kids upstairs to Bruiser’s room, repeating my instructions to play quietly. I returned to my computer at the kitchen table and immediately heard a loud thumping right over my head. The chandelier began to shake.

“Pipe down up there!” I hollered from the bottom of the stairs. “You’re being too noisy! Play QUIETLY!”

“Okay, Mommy!” the kids called. I returned to my seat. The moment I sat down, I could plainly hear my son upstairs, shouting and chasing the dog in circles around his room while she barked raucously.

“That is NOT my definition of playing quietly!” I shouted from the bottom of the stairs. “Sit down and read books together! Don’t chase the dog! And no shouting!”

“Okay, Mommy!”

More thumping from upstairs ensued, but I had to dial in to HLN for the interview. As I waited to go on the air, the chandelier continued shaking. The ceiling continued thumping. Doors slammed. Faucets turned on and off. And then my son began howling, loudly and longly.

I clenched my fists where I sat and prayed silently for a miracle.

It was finally time for me to go on the air, and as I spoke, I mentally braced myself for the kids to come tumbling down the stairs and into the kitchen, shouting their usual litany of complaints- this time for all the world to hear. “He hitted me!” “She won’t play with me!” “He stuck his tongue out at me!” “She won’t share her toys!”

I got my miracle, though. The kids stayed upstairs.

The interview finally ended and I bolted from my seat and ran to the bottom of the stairs. “You can come down now!” I called. The kids emerged from Bruiser’s room. My son’s face was streaked with tears. “A big plastic toy fall-ded off the shelf and hitted me on the head!” he told me breathlessly. I realized immediately he had to be talking about the Lite-Brite. It wasn’t that big and it wasn’t that heavy. “Aw, I’m sorry,” I told him, holding out my arms. “You were very brave.”

“That’s why he was crying so loud,” Punky said. “I would have come down and told you,” she continued matter-of-factly, “but since you said you care more about being on TV than whether or not we get hurt, I made him stay upstairs.”

“Good girl,” I said, smiling brightly.

If this doesn’t convince you that I am the best mom ever? Nothing will.