If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

If you give a mouse a cookie, he'll want a glass of milk. You remember the story, right? Well, if you give me a sick day, I'll want to clean my entire house.


I've had a pretty bad sore throat the last couple of days and felt borderline sick (which by this morning had evolved into confirmed sick), so Thursday afternoon my boss told me if I was feeling sick on Friday to just stay home and take a sick day. I woke up feeling pretty crappy, so I decided to take his advice and stay home.


Before Nick left for the office, he noticed me wiping off the counter after making some tea, and asked me, "You're not going to clean all day, are you?" I looked at him with a bit of the stink-eye and defensively said, "No, why? I'm just wiping off the counter..."


"Because every time you're sick and stay home from work you spend the day cleaning the house." Well... he's right. I usually do. I keep busy taking care of Nora, but then as soon as she goes down for a nap, I feel so lazy and useless just sitting on the couch and watching TV or reading a magazine or whatever else I should be doing to 'take it easy' and rest up on my day of rest. Well of course since Nick pointed this out, I decided to prove him wrong and NOT spend the day cleaning this time. I tried anyway.


Nora inevitably got tired mid-morning, and was ready for a nap. I put her down for her nap and walked out of her room. Once I walked out of her room, I noticed the plant in the hallway was looking a little thirsty... sooo, I watered it. Ok, I over-watered it. I didn't realize this, however, until a few minutes later when I was sitting on the couch attempting to not do anything and I heard a soft tap---tap---tap. I ignored it for a minute. Then I got curious. I got up and walked around a little, and noticed it was coming from the hallway; from the plant specifically. The excess water had gotten to the bottom of the pot and was pooling around the bottom of the plant on the shelf, dripping down from the top shelf, down to the middle shelf, then down to the bottom shelf and onto the floor. So I got a few paper towels and started mopping up my mess - I moved the plant, moved the little shelf out of the corner, and discovered - GASP - look how much dust is in this corner! I used the wet paper towels and quickly wiped up the dust on the floor and in the corner of the walls... and wiped the baseboards. Here is where I trapped myself: I realized how dirty the baseboards were and how easily they wiped clean with a wet paper towel. Naturally, I immediately looked to the other wall and noticed that they were also pretty dusty. How had I not noticed this before?


And that is how I ended up spending half of my sick day cleaning all of the baseboards in my house.