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Omaha Magazine

A Little Privacy, Please?

May 11, 2014 09:30AM ● By Kristen Hoffman
Happy Mother’s Day to all the momma’s out there! I hope you get everything you wish for, or at least a slight moment of guilt-free peace, a handmade card, and breakfast in bed. I have my own Mother’s Day dream— uninterrupted bathroom time.

I cannot sit on the throne of grand flushes without being needed. The next time I feel I’m not needed, I’m simply going to go to the bathroom.

I’m hoping I’m not alone in this desperation to have reasonable alone time. There are only two things that my husband, Chris, does that bug me. He never answers the phone if it’s not for him (Caller ID really isn’t helping). And number two (no pun intended) he gets to use the facilities uninterrupted and for a long as he wants.

I’m jealous. I admit it.

Case in point. We’re all getting ready for school one morning when I realize I need to make a pit stop. I resolve that I should wait until the kids have left for school. My body suggests otherwise. I oblige said body’s request and go up to my own bathroom and shut my own door.

As soon as I sit, the phone rings. And it rings. We all know it’s the neighbor kid calling to see if Max and Lucy are walking to school. Lucy is in her room drying her hair. I have no clue where Max is. I yell to Chris because I know he’s assessed the caller ID.

“Answer the phone, please!” I call out.

It continues to ring.

“I. Am. In. The. Bathroom! Please answer the phone!”

He shouts back up at me, “I couldn’t get to a phone in time, the one in front of me. It’s battery was dead.”

Meanwhile, Lucy has shut off her hair dryer, so it’s time to do a little delegating. “Lucy, call Jennifer. She just called. You need to call her back and tell her you’re walking to school.”

But now she can’t find a phone that is charged. Mind you, the child has bounded down the stairs right past her father, grabbed the uncharged phone, and then once she has realized the phone doesn’t work, what does she do? She bounds right back up the stairs to me in the bathroom to solve this mystery.

By then I was done with my business, but felt the need to just take a moment and reclaim my interrupted bathroom time.

“I. Am. In. The. Bathroom!”

“But the phone doesn’t work.”

“Do you think Daddy could help you with that!?”

“Oh. I guess so.”

And so be it.

It starts when they’re young when you don’t want to take your eyes off them for a single second. When you’re brave enough to shut the door, their little fingers wiggle under it. “Mommy, are you in there?” Clearly, it’s my own fault. I’ve set this precedence and trained them well.

It’s good to be needed. It’s a Mother’s Day dream.

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