My enemies

There's a 2-year-old named Ashlyn, a kitten named Maggie and a 6-year-old named Lily running laps around my room. Maggie is squeaking and the kids are screaming "mommy," and "kitty," and "mommy," and "don't do that ASHLYN," and "MOMMY."

This is a typical Saturday morning minus the kitten who joined our household last night. I try to wake up at 4 a.m., but I never quite manage to climb out of bed before 6. Then there is the ritual of cursing at the empty coffee pot. I tell my husband on Fridays to set it up before he goes to bed,  but he invariably forgets the delay brew. And then I must play the waiting game with my coffee cup in hand and no caffeine to get me rolling.

So, I sit down to write at 7 a.m. By this time the kids are awake, and they want attention. Jerod -- my husband -- is cleaning out the cat box and fixing something for the kids to eat, but that doesn't stop me from yelling at him, "I'm trying to write up here. Would you please get your children out of my room?"  

It takes about 30 minutes to dispose of the kids, and then it's back to writing.

But I've only got a 20 minute window, because Jerod will appear in the doorway and ask me:

"Are you going to make your bed?"

"Can you go downstairs for a minute? I need to check something on the computer."

"Can you give the kids a bath?"

And my favorite question of all, "What do you want for dinner tonight?"

I usually respond to his interruptions with a long list of nasty names and foul language -- and even now I can hear him downstairs, and I want him to shut up so I can concentrate. The baby is crying, because she's in a time-out, and Lily is crying over whatever the baby did to her that put her in time-out. If I had any money, I'd invest in soundproofing for my room or booby traps to keep them all away from my door. 

Eventually they'll head off to Lily's gymnastics class, and I will have two marvelous hours of silence to stew about the lack of progress I've made on the book I've been writing and not writing for far too long -- that stupid endeavor that beckons the question from my loved ones, "Are you done yet?" 

The answer is "NO," but I will be someday if I ever get a few moments of uninterrupted silence to work on it. And seeing as the enemies of my writing are gone -- I'll be off too, for now.