Lane Olinghouse said "The quickest way for a parent to get a child's attention is to sit down and look comfortable."
I say the quickest way to ensure your kids become a pain in the butt is to 1. Look comfortable or 2. Get engrossed in work of some sort. The more likely that job is to hurt them in some way, the better. Like cooking, but not the preparation part of cooking. No, not while you're assembling the ingredients, or pulling out pots and pans. If you want your kids attention, slap a frying pan on the stove, add oil, heat it up and grab a piece of meat, fish or anything else which will splutter and sizzle when it hits the hot oil, I highly recommend frozen sausages which still have a little frost on them. Those cause a hell of a splash and sizzle if you throw them in the hot oil directly. It's an experiment so don't wait for them to defrost, it will defeat the purpose. Now, stand there and grab a timer, and check how long it takes for them to put in an appearance with some inane question or request. 10 seconds maximum I'd say. It's nearly impossible for them to wait longer, or come in before that. The same story with marinade in case you didn't know. They won't show up till you've gotten your hands nice and coated with marinade, then they'll pop into the kitchen and ask you to help them get the lid off a little box or fix the wheel back on their car.
Kids have made me believe that there HAS to be someone up there who loves to torture me. Which is why he or she programmed kids to be the way they are. No other reason for it, and I can't wait that long for science to figure out why. Scientists I'm told are too busy burying dinosaur bones under layers of the earth so they can prove Intelligent Design is false. That's what some of my more religious friends tell me anyway, I can't say for sure.
But never mind that, back to kids. MY kids, since I can't concern myself with what other people's kids are up to, I just don't have the energy to imagine my friends or family's kids running around doing even a quarter of what my kids do, and to imagine them doing everything like my kids would make me want to run screaming through the streets of Karachi, and we can't have that, oh no, no, NO. There's enough chaos out there these days. What with bombs going off every few days, hospitals declaring emergencies and people rushing home praying they miss the next explosion it just wouldn't be fair for me to add my personal madness to the already extreme mayhem. Besides, people would barely notice so what's the point if I don't get some well deserved attention?
Am I making sense? I don't think I am so why should you? ;) It's not my fault really, the kids have been driving me nuts for a week now. Well, they always drive me nuts but this week they've apparently decided I need more torture. Like right now they think standing near me arguing at the top of their lungs about who's a girl and who's a duck will distract me. They're right! So excuse me while I go play referee and at the same time convince myself that locking them up in the storage room won't solve my problems.
