Zen and the Art of Reading an Entire Book, Start to Finish, Preferably All in the Same Year (but I'm not fussy)

I'm reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." It's a great book. You should read it. Really. Right now. So you can tell me how it ends. And what's in the middle. Actually, I'll need to know everything that happens after page 11. Thanks, you're a peach.

You see, I have children.

When they were infants, I satisfied myself by reading parenting magazines, which are wisely arranged in three-sentence snippets with lots of pictures, and tend to be repetitive so one doesn't feel cheated when one must abandon an article mid-sentence to prevent floor-licking incidents and such.

When they were toddlers, I told myself that I would CERTAINLY be able to return to my lovely world of books - when they got just a little older. They'd be able to entertain themselves for reasonable reading stretches, so went my naïve theory. Only my theory didn't include emergencies, like establishing the correct spelling of "werewolf" or the getting of the juice.

I experienced a flashback to childhood: MY mother, perpetually 1/8 inch into Shogun. Or The Lord of the Rings. Or anything, really. I thought she must be the slowest reader on the planet. How long should it take a normal person to turn one single page, for crying out loud? I kept checking.

She never seemed to make it through a meal, either. What with all the condiment emergencies. I realize that fate has come full circle, and I, too, now read like I eat.

Oh, I used to enjoy my meals candle-lit and refined, all Tai-Chi with the utensils, and enjoying leisurely conversation at sub-cilia-damaging volume… Now mealtime lasts 12 seconds, and I'd best watch my extremities.

It doesn't seem like asking a lot - a few hours here and there to lose myself in a paperback. There ought to be some children-sleeping stretches in there, or some play-at-friend's-house time. Right?

Only my kids have book radar. They will develop severe stomach-disintegrating projectile-vomiting diversions when they suspect I have an exciting evening of reading planned. Clockwork.

The friend's house tactic doesn't work, either.
1)  By law, they cannot both tolerate the same friends.
2) All their friends are really the same being - such that only one child can play with said shape-shifting entity at a time, while the other runs reading block.
3) Should the home-bound child be lured out of commission by a well timed mind-numbing television program or possibly free access to the pantry and a "get out of jail free" card, the absent child senses this and begins phoning at 30-second intervals to check whether it's okay to go swimming or eat a Popsicle or take off her shoes.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to have such grand ambition as to complete an entire book - when it's almost a given that a book takes WAY longer to complete than, say, a trip to the bathroom (I can only speak for myself here.)

And I think we've established in many of my other columns, that I'm still a far cry away from being able to do THAT without major interruption.

I can walk into my bathroom in full view of my children, such that they see me walk in there, they know I'm in there, and they understand that there are no reasonably-sized exits to said bathroom through which I might escape. And STILL, they will pound on the door and ask me if I'm in there. It's positively baffling. But I digress.

Newspapers are no panacea to the reading problem, either. The cat is even in on that one. Sometimes I lie and say I'm not actually reading - I'm doing the crossword puzzle. But then both cat and kids feel obliged to help, as crossword puzzles require both pens and "sitting on Mom" - which as anyone knows is way better than (roughly) 16 tons of expensive toys.

I suppose I still have my writing. Once I make it to book form, of course, I'll never be able to read the thing. But for now I can sit down at the computer once in a while and type uninterrup