The Washington, D.C., area is under a high-wind warning. There are winds gusting at up to 60 miles per hour. In the alley behind my house, trash cans are littered about, making it entirely impassable. A neighbor’s trash can hit my SECOND-floor window while bouncing into my neighbor’s yard. Let that marinate for a minute. Mother Nature is whippin’ work right now, and by “work” I mean wind. It is not sexy.
Schools across the region are closed for the day, as is the federal government. Oddly, D.C.’s local government is open for business, but the Department of Public Works has not been by to collect my trash yet, though I have no idea how they’d do that today anyway. The wind sounds like it’s coming to kill us all.
As I said, the school day is canceled. What this mean is that I’m working from home, which is, again, that bullshit. All three of my children are under my watchful eye at the moment, which is providing me lots of free entertainment—my kids are hilarious—and a few moments of immediate heart attack.
As of this writing, one of my children is literally trying to walk across a table—scratch that; he’s now stuck inside an opening IN the table (it’s a Mickey Mouse workstation table), one is playing with an iPad, and the other is strategically avoiding my very intentional “Do you need to go potty?” questions and playing with all of the seat cushions on my couch. All of them. It is only by the grace of God that I’m writing this now. I’ve also started and stopped seven times (and counting) while trying to keep two of them alive despite their best efforts otherwise. I love these munchkins.
My kids, or at least two of the three, have no concept of the fact that Daddy needs to work. They largely don’t give a fuck what I need to get done as long as they catch those McDonald’s Happy Meals and we watch Coco over and over again. While most people look forward to school and work closings, those of us with little kids usually say “Fuck” while thinking of all the things we won’t be able to get done. The list can get long; here are five things that are nearly impossible to do with little kids nipping at your heels.
1. My Job
Rihanna said it perhaps better than anybody else: Work-work-work-work-work-work. Sing it like she does to remind yourself of something else you can’t do with little kids around.
2. Listening to Inappropriate Music
Phonté (Little Brother, Foreign Exchange) dropped a new album today called No News Is Good News. It’s a whole-ass 33 minutes short. I can’t squeeze in 33 minutes and listen to it because it might have profanity and my 9-year-old doesn’t miss shit. Also, I’d just rather not subject my chirrens to foul language yet. Looks like it’s all Jekalyn Carr all day.
3. Cleaning Up
My house is constantly in a state of children-induced disarray, and I can almost never do shit about it until the kids go to sleep. Right now, though? It would be like trying to go up the down escalator. So I will sit and stare at my playroom, which has exploded into a tornado of color, blocks, stuffed animals and other shit I’m too lazy to name.
(At this point, my children have left me alone for eight minutes and are not doing anything even remotely kamikazelike.)
4. Watching Riveting Television
Nope, it’s all unriveting television like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Bunk’d round here. The premiere of Atlanta’s second season, Robbin’ Season, was last night, and it was amazeballs. I watched the episode twice then and would love to watch it again today. That is not happening while my kids are kickin’ it with their daddy. They ramped up the profanity something crucial on Atlanta, and I won’t be responsible when my kids start saying the f-bomb.
5. Conducting Meetings
There is nothing less productive than attempting to have an invested and in-depth conversation about something when your kids prefer to have your undivided attention. And by “prefer to have,” I mean “require.” My kids see me on a call and come yell into the phone. They say, “Daddy daddy ... WUK ... MICKEY.” Mickey is not there. And he never really was.