In turning the corner into the dining room, I saw my daughters bag ‘o hair-pretties, splattered about the dining room like a spilled ice cream cone. “Baby, come here for a second, please!” I called out in a very authoritative, Mom-means-business kind-of tone.

“Yes, mommy?” She responded, hair all over the place.

It was clear she’d been playing hair-do with her brother. I could hear his groans from the other room from her pulling his hair too tightly. “Baby, can you pick up your hair-pretties, please?”

“What hair pretties?” She asks.

“Those hair pretties!” I say, even more authoritatively, as I nudge her into the right direction.

Before she can ask again, I reiterate, “THERE!” pointing now, frustrated from repeating myself several times.

“Can you hang them up?”

“What?” she asks.

“Can you hang them up? Y’know, where they’re supposed to be hung?”

“Hung?” she asks.

“Yes, hung!” I repeat.

Again.

“Hung?” she repeats again.

By this time, my face is reddening, and my patience are gone. “Oh my gosh, baby, YES! HUNG! As in, go HANG them UP where they get HUNG. OVER THERE!” I motion, again, pointing to her dress-up area.

“Oh! Hang it up!” she responds.

And I sigh, grateful she finally seems to get what I’m freakin’ saying.

“Where?” she asks.

As if she doesn’t play with these all the time, and they’re always found in the same freakin’ spot, but no, she needs to put them away, and suddenly she forgets where to put them? ARE YOU SERIOUS!?!?!?

And then, I die inside. Or maybe I fainted, I don’t know.

——————-

Knock, knock

I ignore it, figuring it’s one of my children who can open the door. I continue to write.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Getting louder. I still ignore it.

KNOCK!KNOCK!KNOCK!

“OHMYFRIGGINLORD, WHAT!?” I mumble under my breath as I see a teenager with God-awful make-up like a vampire on my porch.

Wonder-friggin-ful. “Is your daughter here?”

“Hold on,” I grumble, turning to call upstairs to her.

No answer. My husband calls to me from beneath his snores on the couch, reminding me she’s out walking with her friends. I open the glass door to Nosferatu to relay the message. “Do you know where she went walking?”

“Um, no? Around the neighborhood somewhere…” As I shoot a desperate, I need-to-get-back-to-my-work-at-my-computer look, uninterested in assisting the living dead any further, “but I’m sure you can probably ask one of my children outside, they might know whose house she was headed to.”

“Oh, okay. Thank you!”

I grumble to myself as I return to my work, once again. Not 2.4 seconds later, someone barrels through the door, storms upstairs, opening my daughter’s bedroom, closing it, running downstairs like a herd of elephants, to turn the corner and peek out from the wall behind my desk. “Have you seen her?” asking for the very same daughter himself.

“Dude! I asked her friend to ask you guys, because she already asked me and I didn’t know. If you guys don’t know, you can tell her you don’t know, okay?”

“Oh. Okay, mom!” As he rushes back out the door, I’m now leaning against my hands, staring at the screen, completely blank-minded of where I was two seconds ago from massive interruptions, and noticeably grayer than I was five minutes ago.

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