If you give a mouse a cookie…

For quite some time, we have wanted to get the milking equipment out of the downstairs guest room.

But wanting something to happen doesn’t necessarily mean it will . . . unless you decide to host a young adult from Mozambique.

When I learned about the need for a host family back in June, I jumped at the opportunity. I was (am) tired of having an only child at home, and I was (am) sick of our country’s abhorrent attitude toward people not “from here.” Supporting and learning from someone from another country would be a much-needed antitode to our current cultural depravity.

So we applied to host and — whoosh — just like that, a fire was lit under our butts. (Also, my husband had just finished a huge job and had a few weeks off.)

Now here’s where things get interesting. Because: if you sign up to host a young man for a year, then you’ll be forced to take the milking supplies out of the guestroom*

. . . and thus begins our little “if you give a mouse a cookie” adventure.

Here, let me spell it out.

If you decide to take the milking supplies out of the guestroom, then you’ll need a place to put them. Logically, that will be the back hall (a.k.a. the shoe room, a.k.a. the pantry, a.k.a the place the dog sometimes sleeps), but then you’ll have to find a new home for half the stuff that’s stored there.

Which means you’ll need to build a new pantry. The far corner of the living room will be ideal, but that’s where the piano is.

So, bye-bye, piano, and hello, massive dream closet.

But if you build a new closet, then you’ll have to fill it.

And while digging for all the pantry supplies that have been stashed hither and yon (not just in the back hall), you’ll realize that the bathroom dresser that holds lots of crap is actually, itself, total crap. (You knew this before, but you ignored it because you didn’t want a mouse-and-cookie day.) So one fine morning in a fit of rage over one of the swollen-and-stuck crappy dresser drawer, you hurl the dresser out of the house. 

Or rather, you’ll yank out all the drawers and stack them up in the guest room (which still has the milking equipment in it, by the way), and then you’ll get your husband to help haul the dresser out to the porch with all the other crap that’s already been cookie-and-moused out of the house.   

Once you throw out the crappy dresser, it will become obvious that you now need to tear out all the bathroom shelves and cupboards and install “new” second-hand ones (that your husband scored from someone else’s kitchen remodel). 

While you’re putting in the new bathroom cupboards, you will decide it’s time to tear out the old lighting that your 6’5″ son keeps whacking his head on. And if you tear out the lights, then you’ll need to put in new ones.

Also, a bathroom fan.

All the tearing out and stalling-in means there’s drywall to patch, which will remind you that the upstairs bathroom has spots needing patching, too, pant-pant.

At some point (there is so much going on that the storyline will get a little fuzzy), all the non-food shelving in the pantry will get ripped out and dumped in (you guessed it) the downstairs guestroom. Which now, along with all the milking equipment and dresser contents, will also contain coats, shoes, shower curtains, clothes destined for the thrift store, bags of trash, and a multitude of other things.

Also, the porch will be pure chaos.

And the houseguest from Mozambique is arriving in one week.

But now that the pantry is mostly emptied, your husband will remember that he never actually finished the floor when you moved into the house 20 years ago. 

“Hardwood or tile,” says your husband. “Tile,” you say, and so a new project commences.

Once the “new” bathroom cupboards are modified and installed, they will need to be painted. And if you paint the cupboards, then you will also need to paint the bathroom walls. 

And the entryway walls. And the pantry walls. 

Once the new bathroom cupboards are ready, you will have to fill them . . . nicely, so all the medicines and toiletries and cleaning supplies will have to be sorted and organized.

Now that the houseguest is due to arrive in 24 hours, the whirlwind, as if it’s even possible, will pick up.

The milking shelving will get lugged into the newly tiled and painted pantry.

The bathroom will get cleaned.

For the first time in the history of the house, locks will be installed in the bathroom and guestroom. New fire alarms will go in. Guestroom windows and walls will get scrubbed. A wobbly, thrifted desk will get shored up, the guestroom dresser which has a few sticky drawers will get shaved into slidy-drawer submission, a picture will be hung, and lighting will be arranged and plugged in. 

So if you seriously want to get that milking equipment out of the guest room, decide to host someone for a year. Then, chop-chop.

The end.

*Live-in guests get the downstairs guestroom (as opposed to the one upstairs) for easy come-and-go access, as well as close proximity to big bathroom and washing machine.

This same time, years previous: seven fun things, behind the scenes, growing boy lunches, four fun things, the quotidian (8.31.20), at home, crunch week, chomper, the quotidian (8.29.16), tomatoes in cream, it all adds up.