Chill Out!

I was in the bathroom this evening.
By myself.

Isn't that an incredible story?

Ok, so that's not all of it. But I was in the bathroom. And I really was by myself, as miraculous as that may seem. As usual, two of my offspring--or maybe it was three--had followed me up the stairs and were attempting to keep me company in the bathroom, but this time, I managed to get the door locked before anyone made it in behind me.

I was rather enjoying the 2.496 minutes of solitude I hoped I had before someone started banging on the door, screaming my name (Yes, Mommy is my name. Isn't it?), or God forbid, jiggling the door handle. The banging and screaming I can tune out pretty well at this point, but the jiggling always gets me. I'm like the girl who locks herself in the attic in those horror movies. She's pretty sure she's safe while the scary guy is still downstairs, but once she hears his footsteps on the stairs...she knows it's all over. Door jiggling is the NBO equivalent of footsteps on the stairs. One minute I'm enjoying my almost three minutes of peace and relative quiet, and the next minute, the door handle jiggling starts, and I suddenly hear the music from Psycho in my head. At least I think it's just in my head.

Yes, I just said I enjoy that 2.496 minutes of peace and relative quiet in the bathroom. I'm not telling you what I do in there, but it's safe to assume I do the same types of things in my bathroom that you do in yours. Only I might also have a trashy romance novel and a bottle or two stashed under my sink.

So today, I was enjoying my little mini vacation, when I suddenly heard something even worse than the door handle jiggling.

I heard the distinct sounds of the ice cream truck. In April. On a day that feels more like Winter than Spring. Pushing it just a little, Mr Ice Cream Man?

I should clarify that this is not just any ice cream man. Our ice cream man is a stalker. I suspected he was stalking us last summer, when he would just happen to drive by our house, three times a day, until we relented and agreed to buy ice cream because we couldn't take the whining anymore. My stalking suspicions were confirmed however, when he started hanging out at the end of our driveway, blocking our only means of a motorized escape, and playing that music over..and over...and over again, until I thought my head would explode, at which point we would go out, money in hand, prepared to hand it to him even if he was out of ice cream, if only he would just go the hell away.

Finally, one day last Fall, when he had been sitting at the end of our driveway for close to ten minutes, I told the kids to wave good-bye. Since they were wearing sweaters, preparing to collect leaves, and looking forward to Thanksgiving, they weren't terribly disappointed that they wouldn't be getting ice cream that day. Even they knew that it was time for Mr. Stalker Ice Cream Man to go. So they waved good-bye. And I stood behind them, also waving good-bye, as I smiled and mouthed, "IT'S NOVEMBER YOU FREAK".

Eventually, with what appeared to be some degree of sadness, he drove away.

So today, when the kids confirmed my suspicions by excitedly yelling up to me that the ice cream man was outside, I quickly told them, through the door,  that we would not be buying ice cream from Mr. Stalker Ice Cream Man. In April. When it's forty degrees outside. N informed me that he wasn't leaving, though that may have been because B and O were standing in the window waving to him. Maybe he thought that if he just waited long enough, we would come outside, money in hand, prepared to buy him off again just to make him leave.

That wasn't going to happen this time, though.

This time, I discovered that as long as he was outside, the kids were busy watching him out the window and waving. 

That gave me an extra 2.394 minutes in the bathroom. All by myself. 

Maybe Mr. Stalker Ice Cream Man has some value in my life after all.  Maybe we could even be friends.

If only he'd start selling margaritas from that truck.

And deliver them to my bathroom.