if you give a mouse a cookie...

Whenever one of our holdout non-parent friends dares to ask what it's "really like" I refer them to the story about the mouse. I don't know about your house, but it's a good analogy for mine. Take, for instance, last night:

Three Hours To Do The Dishes: A Screwball Domestic Comedy In Eight Acts

Act One, Scene One: The Dinner Hour. Happy family eating dinner.
Baby bouncing on Grandma's lap. Amiable chit-chat. Background: dishes.

Act Two, Scene One: The clean-up
Grandma takes baby to bath. 4-year old wanders off to play. Husband & Wife do dishes together. Amiable chit-chat.

Scene Two: Wife cuts finger on chef's knife carelessly placed in dish rack, heads to bathroom for bandage. Husband, seeing an opportunity, abandons dishes/kitchen and wanders off. Does not return until Act Three.

Act Three, Scene One: The Bathroom.
Baby spies Wife/Mother, starts to cry. Finger bandaged, Wife/Mother retrieves baby from bath. Husband appears in doorway holding drill and a jigsaw attachment. Asks wife "do you know how this works?" Wife's expression says it all. Husband wanders off. Does not return until Act Four.

Scene Two: The Nursery.
Wife/Mother enters nursery holding naked baby, turns on light. Look of horror: orange drips cover walls from ceiling to floor. Scream of horror startles baby (who begins to cry) as Wife/Mother realizes Vicks Vap-O Rub really should not be used in the vaporizer, and vaporizer should not be left running for 12 hours with the door closed. Dishes abandoned. Naked baby abandoned. Bucket of water and sponge procured.

Scene Three: The Nursery.
Grandmother and Wife/Mother on stepladders washing walls. Naked baby playing on floor. Husband/Father no where to be seen. 4-year old watching Survivor. Wife/Mother smells something foul. Looks down: naked baby has pooped on carpet. Wife/Mother's scream startles baby, who begins to cry, steps in pooh and falls down. Dishes abandoned. Walls abandoned. Carpet taken to laundry room.

Scene Four: The Bathroom.
Wife/Mother re-bathes baby.

Act Four: The Stud Finder
Husband, now shirtless, asks Wife/Mother where she put the stud finder. Wife/Mother knows she put it somewhere and for the next five minutes shouts out possible locations. Husband reappears, frustrated. Dishes abandoned. Walls abandoned. Baby abandoned. 4-year old still watching survivor. Wife leaves to look for the stud finder.

Scene Two: Husband, muttering, trails Wife on a fruitless expedition to locate stud finder. Husband leaves house.

Act Five: Bedtime
Grandma puts baby to bed. Wife resumes dish washing. Five minutes later, Survivor over, 4-year old goes to shower and needs help. Dishes abandoned.

Scene Two: 4-year old takes 20-minute long shower, draining last of hot water so dish washing cannot resume until water tank has reheated.

Scene Three: Mother cleans other parts of kitchen while waiting for hot water. Husband returns and begins drilling wall in living room. Baby is sleeping.

Act Six:
4-year old decides to have sleep over at Grandma's - tomorrow is a PD Day. Wife/Mother drives Grandma and 4-year old across town.

Act Seven:
9:45 p.m. Wife/Mother returns home. Husband/Father, shirtless again, still drilling. Baby, unbelievably, still sleeping. Dish washing resumes.

Act Eight:
Kitchen cleaned, Wife/Mother retires to dining room to work on computer, sitting down for the first time in four hours. Husband's drilling replaced by hammering. The thing Husband is mounting on the wall falls off in slow motion, landing painfully on his foot. He turns to Wife and says "I really could have used your help there."

THE END