Chatterbox

SO. . .
As you can imagine, trying to work full time, home school 2+ kids, hold 2+ church callings, helping the other kids with homework, running everyone to activities and keeping up with the laundry, I am always behind. Always. I go to bed at night with a long list of things that I need to do, some of which will never see their fruition. Sometimes it gets rather overwhelming. Especially hard is Rebi and her need to talk. On one hand, I hate to discourage it. After all, she could be the child who answers "nothing" to every inquiry. On the other hand, there are times when my brain just needs the quiet so I can accomplish some urgent or otherwise pressing task and roll myself into bed before I have a stroke. Just an hour or so. Is it too much to ask? Don't answer that.

About 10 pm, I had all the other kids upstairs pretending to sleep (until I became involved in not monitoring them, at which point- every night- they play musical beds for an hour or so, becoming so exhausted from the strain that they drop off where they stand, sleeping the entire night on various floors. Appalling really) and I was just diving into a fairly complex quote for a customer. Naturally this quote is due tomorrow and way more work than the commission I will make on it justifies, but OK. SO. . . I get all involved and concentrated and Rebi sits down and launches into a story. At this point, I probably could have pulled the "Grandma Maizy" (I think I just spelled my grandma's name wrong) trick and nodded and umhmmed every few minutes or so, but I decided to make it a "learning opportunity".
"Rebi, I am totally behind with work and with the house. I have at least 4 major things to get finished before I go to bed tonight and tomorrow we have to start packing and getting the house clean and ready and organized for us to be gone 3 days. I would love to knock out a bunch of this work so that I can leave the laptop home and not work all weekend. But, in order to do this, I need you to be helpful. You could load the dishwasher, start laundry, clean the counters, get rid of old food in the fridge. Anything really, but if we're going to be ready for San Francisco, I really need you to stop talking to me and let me get this work done."

She's nodding along, so clearly we have had a very grown up discussion and she is sympathetic to my needs. Right. She paused at least 12 seconds- just long enough for me to be sinking into the quote again- and said, "So I just have to tell you one more thing. . ." I was laughing too hard to yell at her to go away, so she rambled on for 5 more minutes or so and then wandered off to her room.

Quite the "learning opportunity" for me.