Everytime I am on the phone...

Every time I answer a phone call,  it's basically a get out of jail free card for my kids.  All bad behavior becomes untouchable, uncontrollable, and unavoidable. This post is about how I handle my children when on the phone.  Imagine a living room devoid of furniture and littered with toys.  It's the witching hour.  Personalities are starting to intensify, no one likes each other right now as we wait impatiently for dinner...the phone rings...like an idiot, I answer it. Let the games begin.

Now that I am distracted, Sedric's pent up man energy gets the best of him, he attacks Rafe.  She falls to the floor with Sedric wrapped around her torso like a sarong.  He bumps his chin on her shoulder in the kerfuffle...its his fault, but he pulls Rafe's hair for punishment for making him (his perspective) bump his chin while he pummeled her and sent her to the ground like a felled tree.  
Rafe is enraged and using her zombie Apocalypse shriek to make her displeasure known.
I have been on the phone for 60 sec at this point and I already have forgotten who I am talking to and from which I deduct: there will be no meaningfully expressed words coming from my end of the conversation today, just randomly muttered "uh-huh's" at any pause in the conversation as I dodge the dead spots in our suburban home while my children evoke each other to murderous rage and mischief.
The kids are in crisis mode.  They begin hoarding food from the pantry.  Sedric has climbed to top cupboard shelves and is liberating the fruit snacks and gold fish.  Our kitchen is raining snack food.  The girls are dancing and singing Sedric's praises below as food adorns their Afros.  I'm running between the living room where the baby is laying on the floor in a sea of toys and the kitchen where the older kids are acting like desert island survivors.  I storm into the kitchen flailing my free arm snapping my fingers and posturing my displeasure with a savage stink eye trying not to interrupt the person (I still can't remember their name) on the phone.  The children scatter...or do they?  I walk back to the living room feeling powerful and in control and naively think I may be able to salvage this conversation after all...NAIVE.  All is quiet...not a good sign.  I get back up off the floor where I am playing with the baby and walk back into the kitchen...the pantry doors are open.  The fruit snacks are missing.  The gold fish are missing...CRAP.  Luck for me, my kids aren't good at covering their tracks yet...I follow the trail of fallen crushed food to the family room where they are sitting behind the couch in the window laughing at their completed caper.  They are munching loudly.  I appear very unexpectedly over the back of the couch.  The children are taken aback.  They are now choking and crying from displeasure and surprise as I rip the snack boxes out of their grubby little hands and throw them back into the pantry.  They are really upset now...hind sight, I should have just fed them and turned the TV on...but, like an idiot, I didn't. 
Peniel begins asking me questions I can't answer for obvious reasons:  I AM ON THE PHONE. She wants to know when we can go to the store to buy ingredients to make perfume and the go to Home Depo to buy metal to make a perfume making machine...I keep shaking my head at her as if to say, "I have no idea!"  She is getting frustrated with me and storms off to gather her thoughts before coming back to assault me with them.  The baby is now beginning to fuss so I pick her up and bounce her.  It's not helping.  I begin to scour the floor with my feet in search of her binky...no luck, so I bounce her faster, she burps and spits up down my shirt and all over the carpet...CRAP.  I have completely forgotten at this point that I am on the phone with someone...I mumble, "dang it!"  under my breath as I accidentally step in the puddle of spit up.  I almost drop the phone in surprise when I hear a concerned person in my ear ask, "is everything ok over there?"  What?  Is that you God?  I lie and say, "Of course everything is fine!  Now, what were you saying?"  The uh-huh conversation resumes.  The baby is demanding her dinner by violently grabbing my shirt and head butting me in the chest...subtle as a train wreck.  Peniel returns.  She has something to say.  She begins telling me how I lied to her last year when I told her I would buy her a canvas so she could paint, and she still didn't have one so I have ruined her dream of being an artist...AND ruined her dream of being a perfume maker...I think she had a picture of herself in her head as a scientist in a white lab coat, wearing goggles brewing and pouring concoctions into a sea of beakers with one hand and painting pictures of horses with her other hand...and I was ruining it all!  I whisper to her, "I'll help you become famous later...but not right now, I'M ON THE PHONE."  Sedric and Rafe paddle into the room and collapse on the floor complaining about wanting dinner.  The room is getting too loud but there is no where to go BECAUSE THEY WILL JUST FOLLOW ME and there are too many dead spots in the quieter places in our home, it's all working against me...the baby is soaking my shirt with baby slime growling at me for her dinner, Peniel is still recounting her grievances, and Sedric and Rafe are whining...and the person on the phone is still nameless!  OY VEY.  I interrupt the nameless person on the phone to express my apologies for being distracted during our conversation only to realize I had stepped into the dead zone and lost the call...CRAP.  The kicker is, I still couldn't remember who I was talking to so I could call them back!!  Oh well, I tried.  I put down the phone in defeat, shake my head and sigh, all the while I am thinking, "I promise to never again answer the phone while the kids are awake." 

Fast Food Quality Control

Check the pantry, realize there is nothing amusing to eat.
Convince the kids they want McDonald's by casually mentioning the word McDonald's in a sentence.
Convincing Complete.
Operation Drive-Thur commences.
Pull up to your favorite family friendly McDonalds...conveniently located next door to the gentlemen's club separated only by a dying, thinning hedge bush.
Pretend you live in the burbs and neon buildings don't exist.
Place your order while your kids scream at you to get milk shakes and the meal with a toy!
Pretend you don't hear them asking you to spend more money and tell them they are out of toys and milk shakes.
Sighs of deep sadness emerge from rows two and three.
Oldest child asks what is that beautiful building out the window with the flashing lights and the girl dancing on the sign...
UMMMMMMMMMM......WELLLLLLL.....ITSSSS......oh look our food is ready!
Oldest child cheers and forgets the dancing girl and the flashing lights.
Realize that the day is rapidly approaching when you will have to choose a different, less convenient McDonalds with sub par fries in order to preserve the innocence of your children.
Receive bag of greasy food from the drive thru attendant, wait to inspect the order until she backs away and talks on the headset to another customer.
Open the steaming hot bag.  Inhale.
Prepare to quality check fry #1.  Make sure it is the best specimen in the bag.
Consume fry.  Pretend its super hot so your kids won't ask for one too.
3 sets of eyes begin to narrow as they watch their fries being depleted.
Civil unrest is born in the back seat.
Whispers and looks of mistrust are being passed between toddlers.
I lick my fingers and put the van in drive...
Kids begin demanding a fry for the 5 min drive home.
Tell them they are too hot.
Ask your kids to help look out their windows for oncoming cars...steal 3 fries, consume silently.
Kids hear the bag crunch.
3 sets of eyes narrow.
Stop chewing, JUST SWALLOW.
Mutiny on the Odyssey is full under way.
Listen to your name become a bad word among your children as they realize your fry thieving ways.
Yell at your kids to keep the noise down so you don't crash the van.
Kids demand fries. NOW.
Try to explain to the impatient kids that they may die if you throw them fries while driving because its dangerous and against the law.
Kids demand fries.  NOW.
Collective bargaining begins most inconveniently.
Decide death by automobile is more severe than fry withdrawl.
Peel out of the parking lot.
Cut off a low rider with spinner wheels...CRAP.
Yell at your kids.
Refuse to look out your window as low rider with spinner wheels gets in the lane next to you...CRAP.
Stop at the light.
Pray that low rider with spinner wheels won't follow you home and cap your a**.
Wipe the bead of sweat from your brow.
Reach into food bag with a shaky hand.  Grab a handful of fries and throw them into the back seats hoping they land where little arms can reach them. 
One kid drops their fry just as the light turns green and there is nothing you can do about it...
A "I didn't get any" fit begins.
A slight twinge of fast food regret begins in your mind...more trouble than it's worth?
Eat another fry to comfort yourself.
Three long minutes later, pull into the driveway.
Begin to disembark yourself and kids from the van that smells like grease.
Try not to drop your youngest child who is shoeless and pantless as you try to find the key in your purse while holding the food bag in your mouth.
Walk up to the door sweating and fatigued.
Open the door.
Dogs attack you the moment they smell hamburgers.
Yell at the dogs.
Push the kids through the door with your knee.
One kid falls as usual.  Try not to pull your groin as you lift fallen kid with your foot.
Finally, everyone is in the house, at the table (one kid standing on the table), and ready to eat
Pass out the food.
Realize you didn't quality check the hamburgers.
Unwrap one at a time, take a very large bite.  Savor.  Pass to first kid.  Repeat on hamburgers two and three, savor...
kids give you a look of disbelief.
But after the 10 minutes you just had trying to get them the hamburgers and fries near the strip club, in the hood, on a 4 lane road, almost getting killed by a low rider with spinner wheels...GIVE THEM THE STINK EYE AND EAT ANOTHER FRY.


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