it's magic time

'It's magic time', that's what my mind is thinking as it does it's little mind dance at the strike of two o'clock. The babies are sleeping and the preschoolers are going down for a little of their own 'me' time as I've convinced them that rest time is to rest their brains, so no talking or loud noises are allowed and escaping (err, coming out) of their rooms is punishable by death.

So why does the world seem to be unaware of my little magic time. I turn off almost all of the lights, throw the telephone under the pillow to mute it (just in case there is an emergency, remember I take care of other people's children), but alas to the outside world this appears to be some signal that you are suppose to come to my house, ring my doorbell.

Strike one, they are ruining my me time, my 'magic' time. Strike two, they rang the doorbell. How dare they actually 'ring' the doorbell. Don't they know that doorbells are simultaneously hooked up to preschoolers' brains to activate their twenty questions button. Even if they wait for the full hour of rest time to ask me questions, I tell you, there will be questions. To this, there will be consequence, oh beware of the consequences you 'ringing-my-doorbell-activating-my-preschoolers-ruining-my-me-time person'.

I open the door, it's Southwestern. I have such a soft spot for them. (For those of you that aren't familiar with Southwestern, they are a children's book company that hire college students to go door-to-door selling their books to parents).

Every year that they've come to my door, I've bought books from them. The books are fabulous, Henry loves them and I do believe that his vocabulary is remarkable in part because of these books. I tell her 'of course, I will buy them', I shell out $80 for a set of books (which still gets me that I have no problem paying $80 for my children at the drop of a hat, but me, I clearance rack whatever I think I need, I'm such a burnt toast mother).

Every year I usually end of telling those college, Southwestern booksellers that 'I admire them', that 'they are doing a hard job' and that 'it will look great on their resume'. I also share with them a story of when this anti-supermom was neither anti much of anything (at least not enough for her way liberal college) nor a supermom (or in fact mom at all, yes I do remember that, vaguely).

The lure of a summer away in a new, exciting city. The idea of meeting new people that were doing the same thing as me. I too, was a candidate for Southwestern. The only step left was to actually commit. I called my parents to tell them the good new. My mother asks if I 'was going through some sort of crisis' and proceeds to hang up, calls my father, who in turn calls me less than 10 minutes later and tells me that 'it's not such a great idea'. See it's 100% commission based. What did I know, I was a thought-I-knew-it-all college student.

As I finish my story with this fine student holding dearly to my $80 she replies, 'yeah, this job sucks. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. Three of my roommates already left (umm, it's the beginning of June). I'm going to try sticking it out for a little bit longer.'

So this anti-supermom, when she was neither of those things, wants to thank her father (and her mother) for convincing her that selling door-to-door was not for her. Possibly, he might have even saved my life as I would have never know about mothers who kill doorbell ringers for ruining their 'magic time'.



(Happy Father's Day)