No Where To Hide

All three of my children are sick, pretty much just with bad colds.  However, Sara has that asthma problem which is getting aggravated, Simon is also having tummy problems – thanks to tortilla soup, and Megan just turned eight… that’s all I’ll say about that.

It’s an interesting dynamic here in the house with Sara and Megan sharing a room right next door to Simon’s room.  These two rooms are just down a short hall from our living room, where we occasionally try and watch a movie after the kids are in Slumberville.  This was the case just this past evening: K and I tried to watch a movie (“Rumor Has It” with Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Costner) as the children lay snug in their beds.

K had already been up with Simon twice, trying to get him quieted back down after being awaken by any noise louder than a pin dropping.  Luckily Sprint changed all their commercials to something more night-time appropriate.

I sat on the floor, my back to the love seat and nibbling on a small mug of dry roasted peanuts.  K sat on the couch across from me testing the leftover pizza from dinner.  All was happy in “Casa Douglas”, until “Cookie” one of our two miniature dachshunds started licking himself sitting on the love seat right behind my head.  Being civil I turned to him and asked “Seriously!?”  To which he replied by staring at me, no longer licking his genitals, but continually smacking his lips and licking the air – as if to say “Sure thing chief!  Mind if I just clean up?”  His smacking and noise making carried on for what seemed like until my last nerve was fraying.

My wife and I have different styles of dealing with movie interruptions.  She likes to mute the television and listen to whatever is going on, then if necessary rewinds the movie back to some part before we were interrupted, and continue on.  My method is to simply pause the movie and wait for said interruption to end.  My method still kills the sound and there is no rewinding… I like my method. 

Balancing on that last fraying nerve, “Oscar” our other dog (also a mini dachshund) took a running jump for the open spot on the couch next to K.  Oscar is poor at execution and in mid jump, hits his back on the coffee table, lifting it up and dropping it with a *THUMP*!

Sara starts coughing, Simon starts crying, K mutes the movie to hear which child/children is yowling.  Then gets up to silence Simon… she is gone for about 15 minutes.  The movie is literally all of 3 minutes 14 seconds in.  The beginning credits are still flashing on the screen and is stuck on the Producers List when she has it finally paused.  It was 9:46 when I started jotting this down sitting alone in the living room.  It’s now 3:12 in the morning.  Simon is in the background, in his room making really unhappy sounds, while Sara is in my bed coughing and coughing and coughing… this night will never end.

Megan, who has slept quietly since she was put to bed, is still in her room, snoozing through all the hullabaloo.  She’s my new favorite child, I just decided.  She’s going to college for sure.

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