If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

Ever read the book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" or "If you Give a Pig a Pancake"? That's me. The premise is that if you give the animal something, like a pancake, then he'll want something to go with it, like syrup, and while he's looking for whatever it is he wants, then he gets distracted by something else, and so on until the house is trashed with unfinished projects and the pig is hungry again... for pancakes. Aka "But First" Syndrome.

A few months ago, our front door knob broke and I found one on clearance (woo hoo!) that mostly fit, but the back brackets covered different areas so there were bare spots without paint.

It took me awhile, but I finally got the primer out and primed the front door... and some spots where the paint had chipped off the wooden door frame, and under the kitchen sink to cover the stain from a leak in the garbage disposal...

Meanwhile some of the paint on the inside of the door had bubbled and chipped off. The house is 17 years old.

So it took me awhile, but I bought a little can of front door paint in a pretty forest green, and bought a quart of paint that I thought might match the inside paint color for the door. While I was at the store, I found a little Oops touch up paint sample that looked white and glossy and I thought would be good for painting under the sink.

I let Bob paint the door, and it took several layers to cover the white primer, but I finally got the front door painted a dark green. Unfortunately she also dripped it all over the cream door frame too.

Then I discovered that the Oops paint was the EXACT color of the inside of the front door. *SCORE!* So I found a little piece of leftover sandpaper to smooth around the edges of the chips (and also used it to take off most of the splashes of green on the outside frame), and started wiping with a wet rag and some good cleaner... and then realized that ALL the doors(12), window frames(16), baseboards(7 rooms), pantry shelves(only did 4), and railings (only done the downstairs spindles so far) in the house were the exact same color AND really filthy.

So I scrubbed, wiped, and used my finger to apply touch up paint to the whole house... well downstairs anyway. I figured while I was there with the cleaning supplies... I might as well start cleaning walls and light switches...

The next day I bought some wood cleaner and started attacking wood surfaces like the stair rails. I'm making the kids crazy because I'm constantly looking at surfaces that I normally ignore. Hubby is confused and wondering who is coming to visit.

I decided to save the remaining Oops paint for future touch up needs, but still needed to paint under the kitchen sink (by this point, the cleaning supplies normally stored under the sink had been sitting on the floor in front of the sink for weeks!). So I used the quart of paint I'd bought that I had originally planned for the front door. Kitty had been begging to paint the front porch (she wants the money to pay for tickets to the Harry Potter movie), but I didn't feel she could be neat enough (Bob who I trusted, had made a mess).

We've been getting more pressure to let Kitty be more like a "normal teen" so I decided to let her paint after all. Just not the front porch. I decided to let her paint under the sink. She got one side wall of the cabinet done, and stopped because "her tummy hurt." *sigh*

Remind me to tell y'all how the new chore plan is working.

I let Ponito scrub the front porch clean (he had fun with the water). Since the paint can was open, I decided to paint the front porch today, using the quart of paint I'd bought for the inside of the door (the paint I'd actually bought for it was too dark).

So here's what I've accomplished today

1. Spent too much time on Facebook


2. Painted under the kitchen sink


3. Argue repeatedly on the phone with Medicaid and the kids' psychiatrist staff about getting the kids approved for neuropsych testing


4. Had a useless team meeting with Kitty's skills trainer and even more useless case manager. The skills trainer thinks Kitty's problems are because we let her sleep "too much" and don't treat her like a teen.


5. Filled out a BASC form (never know how to fill these things out. Ex. In the last 90 days. "Does your child argue with others?" Not at all, Once or twice, Sometimes, Often, All the time. Seriously? How do I answer this? Who is others? People outside the family? How often is often? She NEVER argues with others. She argues with me if I allow it. Most of the time we have her life set up so there is as little conflict as we can arrange.


6. Avoid filling out all the forms for Kitty's new pdoc.


7. Take Ponito to flute lessons.


8. Run to the grocery store while he's there to buy sunflower seeds for Hubby who worked from home so he could attend the team meeting.


9. Enjoy 2 1/2 minutes of alone time with Hubby (Bear and a friend left the house at the crack of dawn to go to an Open House in Houston for a trade school he's not eligible to attend- although he doesn't know that. Grandma picked up the girls for the afternoon!) Of course Hubby was working. *sigh*


10. Kiss Hubby goodbye as he leaves to go teach scuba diving.


11. Paint the whole front porch!


12. Throughout all of this I'm supervising half the neighborhood kids. Ponito is in and out with his friends all day. Kitty has a friend and her younger sisters come over for most of the evening, but they stay in the back yard most of the time.


13. Make dinner at 8pm. Ooops! Hubby's home early. Yea!


14. Bear gets home at 11pm and his friend is spending the night. Got them sent to bed (and Bob sent back to bed - she has a headache and can't sleep).


15. E-mail, Facebook, blog... watch Who's Line Is It Anyway?


16. Bed before midnight?