The governor called to offer a few thoughts on an item I'd written about her recent veto battles just as I was starting to peel a banana for my 3-year-old granddaughter, Sloane.

I asked Sloanie if she would mind waiting, and she made it abundantly clear that she would, so I asked the governor to please wait, wondering if a head of state ever before had been put on hold so a banana could be peeled — an operation that was becoming complicated with a squirming child in my lap, a phone with the governor on the line in one hand and the sticky banana in the other.

I gestured wildly with the phone hand to my son, who was in the next room on the computer, trying to get him to take custody of Sloane for a few minutes.

But we tend to communicate in loud voices rather than hand signals, save for one, and he didn't have the slightest idea what I was trying to convey. He shrugged it off as a harmless seizure and went back to playing online poker.

I finally got the banana peeled and the little princess seated elsewhere to resume watching the movie she had on the VCR. But I turned down the volume so I could hear the phone call — amazingly, the governor was still there — and this didn't please Sloane.

The lower volume, along with my talking on the phone, made it hard for her to hear the TV, and her voice followed me around as I looked for a quiet corner to talk, crying, "Shut up! Shut up!"

In the child's defense, this isn't a reflection of her usual phone manners; I was using an earpiece and I'm not sure she even knew I was on the phone.

Nevertheless, being told to shut up by a 3-year-old is unacceptable to me, and I gave her a stern lecture after completing the call about never saying "shut up" to me again.

"Fine," she said, still straining to hear the TV, "then be quiet and don't talk."

The governor took the delay in good humor, and after putting her through it, I'd be remiss not to report the concerns she called to express about the item I'd written on Republican lawmakers who deserted her and voted with Democrats to override 11 of her vetoes.

Her first point was that Republican Rep. Karen Awana had supported her on two of the 11 overrides, not only one as I had blogged. She's right. I miscounted, and I apologize.

More significantly, she thought I overlooked the fact that the GOP caucus stuck with her in upholding her vetoes of 16 other bills that House and Senate leaders tried to override. Another fair point. GOP solidarity on those bills, and the help they got from Democratic dissidents in the House, was an angle worth noting.

Mostly, the governor was perplexed that I had previously criticized her for not fighting back hard enough against legislative bullying, and now was suggesting that her strong charges of partisanship on the veto overrides were a bit harsh.

I tried to explain my feeling that the Democratic votes that helped uphold the 16 vetoes and the Republican votes that helped Democrats override the 11 others actually gave the appearance of some measure of bipartisanship.

As we chatted and I thought about the equanimity the governor had displayed while I handled my granddaughter situation, I wondered why she wasn't more successful in dealing with the Legislature.

You'd think somebody who has that much patience with children would have lawmakers eating out of her hand.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.