Privacy. We has none.

Nobody ever tells you beforehand that once you become a parent you will never see an entire movie again. You will be called away from it no less than 682 times to inspect a boo-boo, to wipe a butt, to save a sailboat from the monster in the toilet, to check under the bed and in the closet for monsters, or to have a rousing game of 200 questions (no that was not a typo).

They also never tell you that you lose all rights to even the most infinitesimal scrap of privacy. They always have horribly important questions when you're in the bathroom too, like "how do you make the water stop in the kitchen?" or "did you know the cat doesn't like mustard. At. All?" or "I drew a picture for you mommy, on the wall, ok?" and will burst in if you don't answer right away because you're taking the time to count backwards from 10 to keep from screaming that you just wanted 10 seconds of quiet and privacy.

I gave up on privacy a long time ago. My Pookie is 11 now. For the most part we are privacy free in this house. We don't keep (many) secrets and are rather open about pretty much everything. However, there is one room in the house that is supposed to be sanctuary, a place to gather your thoughts, to soak in a tub, to lock out the world .. Calgon take me away. Things don't always work out that way though.

Anytime I go into the bathroom, for whatever reason .. to shower, soak, to go, to clean ... if the door swings shut, my daughter is there by some kind of anti-quiet magic. Hovering.

That is the exact moment that she absolutely HAS to ask me a question, to tell me something that happened at school. Three days ago. Or to just generally chat. It matters not that we have been in the same house all day and she has not taken her nose out of her book for the last 6 hours to say anything to me. As soon as the door swings shut, some little alarm goes off in her head and she's there.

I think she is afraid there's some kind of vortex in there that will suck me in if she doesn't keep me talking the entire time ... because if I don't talk, what does she do? She comes in. I've tried to explain to her that it is not the portal to another dimension .. that I am perfectly capable of being in the bathroom alone without any horrible catastrophe taking place and that I will come out and more often than not, I will even be totally unscathed. I do it all the time, even when she's not here. She didn't look like she believed me.

I'm pretty sure she has recruited the animals now too. I rarely push the door all the way closed because really, what's the use? It's going to get opened 2 seconds later anyway, so I just swing it to and don't give that extra shove to make it latch. When she's not here and I wander into the bathroom, there is an insistent scratching on the door almost immediately. The scratching gets louder and more frantic, sometimes accompanied by this weird little chirpy noise. Eventually there is quiet for a second, then a thud.

One or both of the cats will fling themselves at the door until it opens and then come flying into the bathroom. They skid to a halt either by ramming their heads into the vanity or slamming into me, 'cause it's hard to stop on a linoleum floor, ya know. They give me that look like "Wow, you sure are lucky we got in when we did. Something terrible might have happened if we couldn't get the door open!" Then they sit and stare at me until I leave the room, obviously guarding me from the sucking bathroom vortex of doom that was seconds away from taking me.

Maybe if I shut the door as I leave it will take them.