If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

Some Days Are Still Hard

This morning, I yelled at Mike for buying the wrong carrots. The wrong carrots. WTF?

This morning, spilled a whole CPAP tube full of soapy water on the bathroom rug, the rug where the little cat had dragged out at least three-quarters of a cup of used cat litter from the litter box, used cat litter that was still ready to clump. I took a good hand towel, the only one immediately available, and threw it on the floor to mop up everything. Then, I stepped on it to squeeze the water out of the bathroom rug into the good towel. Now, the good towel has clumping cat litter stuck on it.

This morning, I spilled a half a cup of water on the bathroom counter. It all rolled toward a row of new books I liked to keep in the bathroom because new books make me happy. Yes, I decorate with books I want to read. I took the good hand towel, the only one immediately available, off the floor with the used cat litter still clumped onto it and wiped up the half cup of water that was rolling toward my nice new books that I hadn’t yet read. I will need to bleach the counter, the good hand towel, and the bathroom rug.

This morning, I folded the good hand towel with used clumped cat litter on it into the bathroom rug and brought it upstairs to the laundry room. Then, forgetting to scrape the used clumped cat litter off the good hand towel, I threw all of it into the washer.

This morning, I spilled a few drops of bleach on top of the washer where I keep the cat food for the two cats so that the dog won’t eat it when no one is looking and throw up in my garden shoes by the sliding glass door.

This morning, I threw away a whole bowl of prescription cat food in case any of the bleach I spilled got into the little cat bowl. I tried to smell it to see if it smelled like chlorine, but by then, everything smelled like chlorine so I just threw out all the kibbles and put the little cat bowl into the sink where I could run it through the dishwasher.

This morning, the cat sat forlornly on the washer where his bowl should have been and cried. Since I hadn’t run the dishwasher, I was out of little cat bowls, so I put wet cat food into one of my grandmother’s Memory Lane Royal Ironstone berry bowls and hoped the cat wouldn’t push it off the edge of the washer as he ate. I stood there and watched him eat so I could take the bowl off the washer before I washed the bathroom rug and the good hand towel on prewash-extra-rinse-high-spin.

Later, I’ll need to clean the used clumped cat litter off the inside of my washer because I forgot to scrape it off before I threw it in to wash.

This sounds a little like ‘If You Give a Mouse a Cookie’ only not as cute and definitely not as sanitary. Doesn’t the mouse go back to bed at the end of the story?

Thank you for listening, jules