{"id":177162,"date":"2009-12-24T12:35:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-24T16:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9042993421890413585.post-2158186143975490654"},"modified":"2009-12-24T12:35:39","modified_gmt":"2009-12-24T16:35:39","slug":"the-fun-of-being-a-parent-is-finding-humor-in-the-things-that-drive-you-crazy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/177162","title":{"rendered":"The fun of being a parent is finding humor in the things that drive you crazy."},"content":{"rendered":"
Behind Closed Doors<\/b><\/div>\n
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There are fourteen doors in my house. There\u2019s the front door, back door, four bedroom doors, two bathroom doors, and six closet doors. With that many doors in the house, I don\u2019t understand how my boys always zone in on which door that I\u2019m behind. Whenever they see a closed door, they feel that it\u2019s necessary to knock on it. I am partly to blame for this. I have always tried to teach my children proper manners. That includes knocking on a door and waiting for a response before trying to open the door. However, if I close a door that usually means that I need my privacy. It doesn\u2019t seem to matter which door it is, there always comes a knock on the door before I\u2019ve decided to open it myself.
\nIf I\u2019m in the bathroom, with the door closed, then I definitely want my privacy. It\u2019s like these kids are drawn by some magnetic field to a closed door but repelled by an open door. Every time that I go into the bathroom to do my business, my business and nobody else\u2019s business, there\u2019s a knock at the door. There must be some mathematical equation for this. Closed door + mom= knock, knock, knock. For the last twelve years, I have not been able to go to the bathroom in peace.
\nToday, I entered the bathroom hoping, just once in my life, for two minutes of privacy. Lo and behold, what do my ears hear? Knock, knock, knock.
\n\u201cWhat,\u201d I yell from my throne.
\n\u201cMom, are you going to the bathroom,\u201d asked Austin.
\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m visiting with the Pope,\u201d is my reply. \u201cOf course I\u2019m going to the bathroom. Why what do you want?\u201d
\n\u201cNever mind.\u201d
\n\u201cYou mean to tell me that you couldn\u2019t wait two minutes to tell me never mind,\u201d I grumbled opening the door.
\nIt\u2019s always something that could have waited just two tiny minutes until I opened the darn door. The question or comment never comes in the form of a dire emergency. God forbid they have to wait two minutes, let alone two seconds, to aggravate me.
\nEarlier today, I went outside to smoke a cigarette and to get a few minutes of peace and quiet. Ha, that didn\u2019t work. As I took the first drag of my cigarette and pondered what my next task of the day would be, my oldest son, Christian, knocked on the inside of the back door and peered out the window at me. With phone in hand, he opened the door letting the freezing cold winter air into the house and proceeded to ask me what his fathers\u2019 phone number was.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t know! What do I look like, a phone book?\u201d I asked with a scowl on my face.
\nI set my cigarette down on the railing and went in to find his dads\u2019 phone number. He had called his dad several times within the last two days. It shouldn\u2019t be that hard to find the number already in the phone. I then proceeded to show him how to gently put his finger on the redial button and keep pressing it until the area code for New Jersey came up. After all, that\u2019s about the only number from New Jersey that is dialed on our phone. He kept pushing the redial until he saw his dads\u2019 number. With a smile and a press of the talk button, he had learned something new. He was totally dumbfounded by his new found knowledge.
\nI left him to his conversation and went back outside to finish my cigarette. When I came back in, I had to dodge the dust balls floating across the floor as my husband chased them with a broom. Oh my God, he\u2019s sweeping! Yes world, I said sweeping and not sleeping. Now that\u2019s a first. It\u2019s really nice of him to sweep even though I\u2019ll have to go behind him and redo it after he goes to work. After all, he is a man. I went to my room and shut the door. Maybe this time I can get some quiet time. Usually, when I have my bedroom door shut that means I\u2019m either sleeping or I just want to be left alone. As soon as I sat down on my bed, there came a knock on the door.
\n\u201cWhat,\u201d I yelled.
\n\u201cCan I come in,\u201d asked Christian.
\n\u201cYes.\u201d
\nI waited for him to open the door but he didn\u2019t. I guess it wasn\u2019t that important. I shrugged my shoulders and lay down on my bed. Knock, knock, knock.
\n\u201cWhat now?\u201d
\n\u201cCan I come in?\u201d
\n\u201cYes! I told you two minutes ago that you could come in,\u201d I screamed.
\n\u201cSorry, I didn\u2019t hear you,\u201d he said opening the door.
\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d
\n\u201cI just wanted to let you know that dad didn\u2019t answer the phone,\u201d he informed me.
\n\u201cAnd you\u2019re telling me this why,\u201d I asked shaking my head.
\n\u201cCuz I wanted to let you know that I\u2019m waiting for dad to call me back,\u201d he replied sweetly.
\nWill there ever be a time, I wonder, when I can relax behind a closed door? Perhaps I need to start hiding out in the closets. I have yet to see the boys knocking on a closet door.<\/p>\n

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Behind Closed Doors     There are fourteen doors in my house. There\u2019s the front door, back door, four bedroom doors, two bathroom doors, and six closet doors. With that many doors in the house, I don\u2019t understand how my boys always zone in on which door that I\u2019m behind. Whenever they see a closed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2884,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2884"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}