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I couldn’t help but wonder as we drove back home over Donner Pass last week – How did the Donner Party survive the trip without a DVD player in their covered wagon?

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In my previous life, BC – Before Children, I made haughty predictions, lofty goals and ignorant promises about how I would raise my children. This includes, but is not limited to:

-         They would do something the first time they were asked

-         They would eat whatever was put in front of them

-         They would go to bed on time and without delay

-         They would not eat junk

-         They would never act like that

-         I would be consistent with my parenting

-         If I could just stay home we would read books, play games, make crafts, and bake

-         I would only allow them to watch educational programming

-         I would not park them in front of the TV just to make my life easier

Now, AD – After Diapers, I am humbly begging for forgiveness from the DVD player gods and burning all those parenting magazine that led me to believe such things were even possible.

Which leads me to the many things I am grateful for in this life. Following is a short list of the things that make my life as Mom easier:

-         Convenient snack size packaging

-         Shout stain remover

-         Bedtime

-         Baby wipes

-         Pizza

-         TVs in separate bedrooms

-         A two bathroom house

-         Juice boxes

-         The microwave

-         2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner

-         In-car DVD player

I’d like to take a moment to focus on the last one, after I finish my silent prayer of thanks.

When we were shopping for a new car five years ago, I told my husband I didn’t need nor want a DVD player in my car. It would be a waste of money. Playing the ABC Game, License Plate Bingo, taking in the scenery and enjoying family time together was good enough for me as a kid and it would be good enough for my own children.

Good thing I was overruled by Hubby.

Apparently, I had blocked out the constant bickering, fighting and complaining that came with those quality car rides. Along with the threats and reckoning from a shoe wielding, exasperated mother. And how could I have forgotten the whines of boredom and “when will we be there?” mixed in with begging for a bathroom break?

Now, when the chaos in the backseat threatens my sanity I simply say, “Who wants to watch a movie?”

Soon, I have quiet little zombies in the back seat, headphones connecting them to this life saving device. Peace, once again, spreads across the land.

Sure, the majestic snowcapped Sierra Mountains may go unnoticed over Kung Fu Panda. Quite possibly we are missing a teachable moment, instead letting our kids be parented by Danny Tanner from Full House.

But I bet, if the Donner Party had had a DVD player their trip would’ve gone a lot smoother with a lot less headaches.

My kids are out of school this week for “Ski Week.”

Yeah. Ski Week. Officially, it’s called Presidents’ Days and Break, but as I listen to my kids fighting again in the other room on this sixth day of the break, I’m thinking it should be called Hell Week.

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What I want to know is, Where the heck was this week when I was in school? I gotta think this is a way better gift for a kid than a parent who now has to scramble for some made up holiday break to keep their kids entertained.

So Logan and Whitney, who moan every school morning, “Why do we have to go to school? Why can’t we stay home?” have finally gotten their wish.

And now they’re moaning, “I’m bored. What are we going to do?”

At seven and nine years old, the irony is totally lost on them. It’s not even fun to tease them about it because then they just think I’m being mean.

Here’s my thing: I don’t get Ski Week. It’s business as usual here. Bills to be paid. Groceries to be bought. Deadlines that still need to be met. In fact, I have the added bonus of trying to meet my normal responsibilities, but now with two whining, fighting, disaster making kids underfoot who think I should be dancing to the tune of Let Me Entertain You.

I’ll tell you what’s entertaining. When one of the kids comes to stand over my shoulder while I’m furiously typing at the computer, trying to get a little work done while they’re distracted for 37.2 seconds with a mind-numbing Disney Channel show. After they don’t take the hint that I’m ignoring their Excuse-Me-I’m-Bored-Here sigh, one will inevitably ask, “When are you going to be done?”

Ah, the naïveté of youth that they can’t smell the deep doo-doo before they are about to step in it.

“When am I going to be done? When am I going to be done?” my tirade begins as I swivel around. “You mean when am I going to be done playing waitress, serving you up three meals a day and snacks? When am I going to be done playing maid, cleaning up the messes you’ve left behind? Or drill sergeant for trying to get you to help? When am I going to be done arranging a week of playdates, indoor adventures and outdoor excursions together? When am I going to be done renting movies, making popcorn, making errands more exciting and planning them around your grumpy cycle?”

Slowly the frightened child backs away, only now aware they took one unfortunate step too many. But, I’m not done.

“What do you think Mommy does all day while you’re at school? Do you think I sit around eating bonbons? (My favorite go-to phrase, BTW). Do you think this is Disneyland where everything is just magically perfect? Mommy works! Mommy has work to do! Mommies don’t get vacations!”

As the bottom lip trembles, and tears well-up with youthful disappointment, I cave.

“Okay, as soon as I’m done here we’ll go for a bike ride.”

Someone must have wished for a guilt-ridden push-over for a mother.

There is one area of my house that seems to repel clutter. I consider it my “safe room.” Some people have safe rooms for security, I have a safe room for sanity. It is where I retreat to when I can’t stand the sight of another pile, another discarded piece of clothing, abandoned toy or wayward shoe.

My safe room, technically, is not a room at all. It’s merely a passage way to other areas of the house. There is no chair for me to sit when I escape there. No door to shut to keep others out. I just stand there on the small area rug covering the hardwood floor absorbing its resistance to family chaos.

This beautiful piece of unmolested feng shui is my entry way. It is miraculously devoid of anything (excluding dust and dog hair dust bunnies) that shouldn’t be there, and for this I love it.

There’s not much to it - a bubble gum machine in the corner and the two small tables adorned with pictures and knickknacks representing the most current holiday. But its simplicity isn’t necessarily what stops the clutter from congregating there. There’s not much to my nightstand, but it’s littered in books, magazines, papers, and sudoku puzzles I’ve been meaning to get to, as well as errant jewelry and hair ties, three TV remotes, cough drops, and a week old glass of water with a film of dust and what looks to be a gnat floating in it.

Its role as a passage way doesn’t seem to be the key to its pristine condition either. The other transitional area of the house, the hallway, is always good for at least one shoe, sock, dog bone or toy, ball (left from playing unsanctioned “hall ball”), or not-mine contraband flung from a brother or sister’s room when they’ve been forced to tame the bedroom clutter.  

The location is probably helpful. Since our family enters the house through the garage into the den, that's where everything gets dumped the second someone crosses the threshold. Its place in between the hall and kitchen, leading to the family room, offers no convenient surface to mindlessly deposit something. No one has stacked anything to be sorted later because that’s what my kitchen counters, desk, china hutch, coffee tables, nightstands, bathroom counters and bedroom floors are for.

Hubby doesn’t linger long enough in the entry to pollute it with a discarded Pepsi can, loose change or crumpled receipts because there are no masculine touches to cause him to pause and notice this area of the house exists.

The breakability factor in the entry way – high - with framed artwork on the walls and prized surface decorations isn’t worth the risk of Mom’s wrath to the kids. So they steer clear of the area when on a rule breaking tear, instead knocking anything and everything else over while racing through the house tackling each other, playing outdoor games inside, and chucking stripped clothes.

As for me, I have vowed to keep any piles of unopened junk mail, unread papers, stacks of kids’ school paperwork, calendar input, or any things to be put away, filed or sorted (including laundry) from collecting in the one space in my house, that against all odds, has remained a clutter free oasis.

That is, if I pretend that there is nothing behind the coat closet door and we all agree it doesn’t need to be opened.

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What does it say about me, as a person, that I was disappointed to the extreme of grabbing a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie (the only kind that truly makes life’s injustices seem insignificant) to temper my dejection – and all because Rock of Love Bus wasn’t on last night at its regularly scheduled time?

I mean, the draw is certainly not Bret Michaels - a fossilized rocker with bleach-bad hair extensions, a strangely permanently puckered pucker, and skanky taste in women. Although, his poking fun at his own expense narratives do redeem him a bit.

It’s also not his music, because despite the worthy ballad Every Rose Has Its Thorn that was great to grab a** and suck face to 20 years ago in the corner of a high school gym dance, I’m not feeling it. I’ll still take Def Leppard creaking around the stage over Poison any day.

I think it must be the are-these-women-for-real gals who, for a third season now, keep cat fighting their way to be Bret’s one true love (in the rocker sense of the word, which obviously means until next season’s episode of Rock of Love).

I love these women, none of which has a real set of breasts (I’m not allowed to say b**bs on this site) among them. Or, as far as I can tell, a molecule of self-respect. And “natural beauty” is as foreign a concept to them as intelligence under the pounds of make-up, bleached and dyed masses of weaved hair, and t*ts and a** hanging out so much that who bothers to look at their faces?

Why do I love this handful of loose-moraled women? They make the rest of us women look good. I look like a Noble Prize Laureate, Miss Manners prodigy, girl-next-door beauty and life lottery winner in comparison. For every drunken display of idiocy (or sober for that matter), ding-bat comment, and whines of wanting to be loved for who they are (despite altering themselves to a point that their own mothers probably don’t know who they are), any slip of judgment or poor choice I’ve ever made still keeps me in the running for the second coming of Mother Teresa compared to them. 

What fascinates me the most though about the Rock of Love series (I’ve been a loyal fan despite the ickiness by association and shame that washes over me as I watch), is look what these women are competing for! A chance to be the love, and I use the term in as loose as sense as these women, of an aging, past his prime, Botox and Restilin infused rocker who still doesn’t have the good sense to let the 80’s hair thing go. If this is the only way these women could find love, then someone needs to slap their mommas.

Call Rock of Love Bus what you want, a train wreck of reality TV too voyeuristically tantalizing to turn away from, a rubber-necking crash of sin and sex and rock n roll, or in my case, an hour of television my husband is not allowed to interrupt with nudges for nookie.

I think Rock of Love Bus is wonderfully, horribly, good bad TV. However, if my daughter ever looks, dresses, acts or aspires to be the sex toy groupie of a rocker, someone slap me and lock my daughter in a room with Condoleezza Rice.

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