Just when you think it's safe to go to the bathroom...

One day, shortly after becoming a mother to two little boys (born just shy of 13 months apart), I had a sudden and powerful thought: "It 's going to be years before I will ever be able to go to the bathroom by myself again." Now, I'm not talking about those mach speed emergency dashes to the bathroom that all Moms are able to complete in under 30 seconds while one child is securely strapped into the high chair and the other is just as securely strapped into the baby swing (and with the bathroom door wide open and ears on alert for the slightest sound of a little one gagging or coughing or tipping over the high chair). Those insanely fast bathroom trips we all must take from time-to-time, or suffer the consequence of eternal bladder infections, are not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about a nice, sit-down with a magazine that you actually get to read while you're in there. (Well, not the whole thing, but at least one article!) You know what I'm talking about. The kind of bathroom breaks our spouses/significant others/partners seem to be able to fit in at least once a day (especially right after arriving home, after you've spent 9 hours listening to: "He hit me! I'm hungry. Mom! MOM! He touched me! Quit touching me! Hey, Mom, the dog threw up on the carpet again. I'm thirsty. He poked me! Mooooommmmmmyyyyyy........" and need nothing more than to immediately hand over the kids, pour yourself a tall glass of Cabernet, and collapse on any piece of furniture that doesn't have a child or a dog anywhere near it). Anyway, I had this realization about bathroom privacy being a thing of the past, and I dealt with it. I dealt with it pretty well, actually, because I knew that there was a light at the end of this particular tunnel. There will come a time, I told myself, when I will have bathroom breaks again. A time when I won't have to be so obsessively worried that, while I'm in the bathroom reading about the latest anti-wrinkle cream I apparently should have been applying regularly since the age of 20 (oops), one of my boys will fall and crack his lip open on the corner of the coffee table, or drink all the slobbery dog water, or draw all over the walls with crayons (all things which have happened in my house, by the way). Or simply a time when one, or both, of my boys has outgrown the need to accompany me literally every single place I go. That simple thought kept me going for the last several years: "Someday I will have a bathroom break again!" As it turns out, today was not that day. SIGH. Today, while my boys were building block towers in the living room, I thought it would be safe to visit the bathroom for a bit all by myself. I was even optimistic enough to bring a book with me. I should've known better. All seemed well at first. I could hear the boys talking and giggling (and throwing blocks at one another). Then, I heard a noise that sounded a lot like a big moth being zapped by a bug zapper. I listened carefully, and I heard it again. Zap, zap, zap. Well, since we don't have a bug zapper or any toy which replicates the sound of a bug zapper, I launched myself off the pot, out the bathroom door, and flew into the living room in time to see my 4-year old spraying Oxi-Clean directly into the T.V., which was flashing on and off, producing an unpleasant burning odor, and making the aforementioned zapping sound, while my 5-year old danced around with my feather duster happily shouting, "We're cleaning the house for you, Mommy!" With adrenaline shooting through my body, I hollered something along the lines of, "Get out the back door -- the T.V.'s going to catch on fire!!!", grabbed the T.V. cords and unplugged them from the wall, called the dogs, and ran outside to join my boys on the back porch, thanking my lucky stars that my little guy hadn't been electrocuted and hoping my house wasn't about to burn down. Once I knew that everything was OK (except our T.V., which is now officially deceased), I began the lecture (not for the first time, by the way) about not getting into the cleaning supplies, being safe, asking before touching anything like that, blah, blah, blah....As an aside, I do keep my Oxi-Clean and other cleaning supplies HIGH up in our cleaning closet. Apparently, my boys have discovered that they can clamber straight up the shelves like monkeys to reach whatever the heck they want to get their grubby little hands on. So, perhaps it's still a bit too soon for relaxing bathroom breaks. But, I will continue to look forward to that day, sometime in the not-too-distant future...I hope. Cheers!