This means when my kids are home I rarely attempt to write or do anything "work related." In fact, sometimes I wonder if my kids think I have magic powers to write books since they hardly ever see me do it.
Whenever I have tried to write while they are around the scenario usually goes something like this:
I am writing:
I ran around the corner to hide.
"Hey, Mom! Look at this!"
"What? Oh, wow, that's amazing, honey."
I slid behind the door into...
"Hey, Mom, guess what?"
into...
"Mom!"
"Yes?"
"Look how many times I can jump rope! One, two, three, four..."
"Oh, wow. I bet you could make it to five hundred."
"Yeah! Nine, ten, eleven. Oh, man, I messed up."
into the...
"No, look Mom! I can do it!"
"I know you can, honey."
into the closet. Then...
(Different child) "Mom, are you almost done?"
Sigh. "Well, I have about 175 pages to go."
"What?!"
"But, I have managed to write two sentences in the past fifteen minutes."
"So, you're almost done?"
"No, buddy. I'm not even close."
"Can we go to the park?"
"Sure, just after I finish this thought."
"How long will that take?"
"That depends on..."
(1st child) "Mom, guess how many times I caught the ball at recess yesterday?"
"How many?"
"No, you have to guess!"
"Five."
"No, three."
"Good job."
(2nd child) "Can we go to the park now?"
"Sure. But first, you guys go hulahoop while I finish my thought."
"Okay!"
Then I...
"Mom, look at this!"
Sigh. Click off the computer. "That's amazing, honey. All right, kids. Let's go to the park."
Yep, that's generally how it goes, which is why I don't usually try to write when the kids are home. And honestly, I'm fine with that. I'd rather be involved with my children. It works pretty well for me. I write when my kids are at school and when they are home I am just Mom (in other words, a taxi driver, tutor, piano teacher, cook, mediator, cheerleader, bedtime-enforcer, etc).
However, last week when the kids were on Spring Break, I found myself in a predicament. You see, I had already agreed to participate in a session with my online writing group without remembering my kids were out of school for a whole week. I found myself with 8 segments to review of fellow writers, with one week to complete them, and no good time to do it. One review often takes me a little less than an hour. Usually, this is not a big deal as I can do one or two reviews a day. But the thought of finding eight hours to work while the kids were home seemed impossible.
I decided I would do one review before they got up and one review after they went to bed. If I did that every day, I would get them all done within the week deadline.
Well, that worked for the first day. The second day, the kids were up before me and were already watching Wild Kratts on Netflix on the computer. So, I let them watch it on "small screen" while I worked on the other half of the screen. (There is no TV in our house so our computer is used for everything.) This worked pretty well as I'm an expert at tuning out TV shows (minus the occasional, "Mom, watch this! It's hilarious!"). I think I did this the third day too.
On Thursday, they woke up before me again (obviously, mornings are not my strength), but I felt guilty having them watch TV again so I tried the I'll-just-work-while-they-play idea. Well, I bet you can guess how that worked out from the above scenario. Except for this time it was worse because the kids were arguing and I got mad too. And then I felt guilty over everything—getting upset at the kids, working while the kids were home, and mad that I thought it would ever work in the first place.
So no, things don't always go as planned. And no, I'm not perfect. But I do my best. The good news is I managed to get up early the next day and get my last two reviews done.
You might say to me, "just tell your kids you're working from this time to this time and they can't bother you." I know that works for some people, (and I realize that some people have to do that) but not for me. I'm not wired that way. When my kids are home I want to be with them. My books will eventually get written. My kids only grow up once.
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