If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

There's a children't book called If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. It's all about a chain of events. Give him a cookie and he'll want milk. Give him milk and he'll do something else...blah, blah. In the end, the story comes full circle with the mouse wanting another cookie. It seems that life is like that around here, these days. One little job begets another job, usually bigger.

We decided to have the bathroom floor replaced. I bought some quality vinyl and scheduled the fellow that does that for me. But first, we needed to get the wallpaper scraped off the walls...something that has been in various stages of completion for over a year, so we could paint behind the fixtures before the floor went in. I finally hired a fellow to help get that finished. Then, I figured that we needed to take the sink and sink cabinet out in order to get the flooring under all of that, to do it right. Friend Ryan helped with that...but the shut-off valves under the sink were stubborn, so those were going to have to be replaced. Then the toilet had to come up. Hmmm...another shut-off valve needed. I also wanted a "clean" paint job done on the baseboards, so those came up, too. (Do you see where I'm going with this?) The last bastion of effort came with putting up a permanent shower rod (instead of the tension rod that has been up there forever). That created another problem which is still being worked on. You get the picture. It ain't over 'til it's over!

The children came home from Muncie quite peaceful tonight. They played nicely together in Robin's room until long past bedtime. I maintain that part of that is the fact that Robin's room was clean and organized--something that took me several hours on Saturday. She could find things so wanted to play with them! They were tucked in late but seemed to be ready to sleep. Uh...maybe I spoke too soon. Just found both of them in Robin's room (10:50 PM).

Time for Grandma to hit the sack. Tomorrow is the "make it or break it" day for getting the house presentable for a guest. I'm not sure it's worth all the work we've put in!