Me Time

There's an episode of The Cosby Show that brings tears to my eyes every time I think about it. It's the one where Claire is about to put some of the children up for adoption, because they won't leave her alone (or something like that). As an alternative, Cliff converts an empty room into her own private soundproof, electronically locked sanctuary. I need to marry a woman like Cliff...a Cliffette.

Since 12:30 today my daughter has been following me around...literally. If I sit on the couch, she sits on the couch. I went to the kitchen for some water, and I looked over to see her grabbing one of her little tumblers out of the dishwasher. I went to the bathroom and (no lie) she grabbed my waist from behind and started doing the conga line chant (dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-HEY!) as I walked to the bathroom. She let me close the door, but as soon as she heard it flush she burst through the door.

When she realized that my sitting on the couch to watch the game was gonna take a while, she started asking me to do things with her. "Let's play hide and go seek!" "Can we read The Three Bears?" "Can we go to Giant and get Goldfish?" Now mind you, we sang and danced and colored and recreated the Michael Jackson Scream video with two Penguins for at least two hours prior to me watching the game. It wasn't enough. Her affection requires a blood sacrifice, and in this case it was every touchdown, interception or Red Zone play.

A normal man wouldn't have made the cut, but not me. I kept thinking about how much I love her and that she was worth it. Okay, that's more like the theme of what I was actually thinking. It all boils down to love, but my actual thought was, "She's gonna end up on the pole, because I wanna see if they get a first down." I have to say that The Players Club has encouraged me to be a better parent than any parenting book out there.

So I ended up missing most of the game. She stretched out on the kitchen floor directly behind me while I cooked, and she pulled up a chair beside me ten minutes ago when I sat down to check the weather on my computer. It was when she started reaching for the trackpad in an attempt to navigate to the bookmarks in order to get to her Youtube playlist that I decided enough was enough.

"GO SIT DOWN ALL THE WAY OVER THERE!"

She wasn't amused. She screamed, hollered, shouted, and kicked, which normally would've been followed up by a scene from my upcoming play, "Joe Jackson: The Musical," but when she kicked she accidentally hit the table with her foot. I think God beat her to save her life. So anyway that prompted her to just sit on the couch pouting. 63 seconds later, I heard her snoring. That was 17 minutes ago. It's 5:25pm...too damned late for a nap, but I need some me time. This is my sanctuary. In the last 17 minutes I've eaten, read the news, played a round of Tetris on my phone, watched highlights of the game I missed (with the volume completely down), eaten the last Reese Cup out of the freezer, and now I'm just waiting out my last minute and eighteen seconds before I have to wake her up. I can live a whole lifetime in that amount of time.

*and of course the *$*$&#&#@* fire drill just went off in my building!

Gotta go. I bet she set that ______ off with her subconscious.