Can you hear me now????

"The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives."-Anthony Robbins

You should be a fly on the wall when I am on the phone with one of my children and my husband happens to be in the same room. Complete chaos takes over as I try to have a one on one conversation with one of them while my husband is interjecting questions and comments. I cannot complete a thought or a sentence without him trying to take over the conversation, but if I offer to hand the phone over to him in an attempt to end the madness, he waves me off like I am bothering him. I don't know what to say about this except that I hate it. I tell him before, during and after these phone calls that I do not appreciate being the mediator or being interrupted, but this never registers in a way that brings about a satisfactory behavioral change on his part. I'm going to start going into the bathroom and locking the door from now on when I want to talk in peace because I don't see this changing any time soon.

This is what happens, though, if I bring up to him that I've spoken to one of the kids (and he wasn't around to hijack the conversation). He'll start bombarding me with questions that he feels I should have asked them and if I haven't asked them those questions he tells me that I've neglected to find out/ask about the most important things! WTF? Yep. He does that every damn time as though I have somehow mysteriously developed telekinetic powers and can read his mind to know what he wants me to ask them. This is what I live with!

Sometimes I want to slam my cell phone to the ground and stamp the shit out of it. I know this would make me feel better about the lack of phone conversation etiquette in this house.