Why? Because We LIKE You!!!

We're pretty big on accountability around here. It helps keep things simple because everybody knows where he or she stands with everybody else. By the way, thank you, Hubby, for fixing the kitchen faucet. I could have done it myself but it would have taken two days, put the rest of the house in (a greater state of) disarray and eventually caused our divorce. I wouldn't have had the stomach to do the marriage thing yet again, so I would have died a dowager's death, up in flames like Miss Havisham in her old withered lace dress, so thanks for trading ninety minutes of your time to save me from that fate.

Hubby is so handy! He can fix pretty much anything. And since he's a computer genius you know I can fix my own pretty well because my computer is just about the last thing he ever wants to hear about. I took care of that overheating problem the other day, Hubby. Thanks for asking. You do generally take care of the big stuff so I try not to freak out about the little stuff...



Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, accountability and little things. This is a holdover from years growing up in Mimzi's house. Mimzi and Uncle Mack (one of my brothers) were here the other day to watch the Beans (Mimzi) and play with Katie (Uncle Mack) while I ran errands and worked for a couple of hours. The great thing about Uncle Mack coming over is that it makes Katie very happy because Uncle Mack (who happens to be autistic) can actually outlast her endless ball-chasing exuberance. The not-so-great thing about Uncle Mack coming over is that he has a bit of a hand-washing OCD that's hard on the already lazy plumbing in the hall bathroom. He spent a good thirty minutes in there quietly, leaving everybody to wonder what he was up to. Most of the time it's just getting the OCD thing satisfied. Occasionally we end up with a clogged toilet. Either way it's a surprise and you know how we like surprises.



Anyhoo, right after Mimzi and Uncle Mack left, Biscuit went into the bathroom and asked me to bring him more TP. I obliged, not getting into the particulars except to ask him to put two of the three rolls I was bringing into the drawer.



"Um, there's kind of already some in there," he replied cryptically. Cryptic is not unusual for Biscuit since he was probably also thinking about three or four shiny objects that had caught his fancy earlier in the day. Still, I was a bit puzzled.



"How is there 'kind of' more?" I inquired, pausing at the door.



Biscuit stepped aside and pulled open the drawer, in which I saw this:





"Did you do that?" Biscuit's eyes went wide under Penetrating, Piercing Pie-Eyes. The next few seconds would be very important in determining how he would spend the remaining days of his summer vacation. Biscuit took a big breath and made sure he had his serious face on.



"No. I did not. Not unless I did it while I was sleeping," he said very c l e a r l y a n d d e l i b- e r a t e l y and then he paused, as though giving this honest consideration. It was plain on his face. He was wondering, "Did I really do that in my sleep? Is there a possibility it happened? If I did it in my sleep, I suppose it would be technically my fault because my hands were the hands that made this mess. But I wouldn't have intended to do it, so do I take responsibility for it? If I take responsibility for it even though I didn't really mean to do it, she'll think I'm being really responsible and that will probably get me in less trouble. But if I take responsibility when someone else did it all along and only led me to believe that I did it in my sleep, then I'm just a chump who loses the rest of summer vacation because somebody PWNed me."



"Relax," I said. "I'm not going to ground you."



I scooted over to the phone and dialed Mimzi, hoping to catch her before she got all the way home about four minutes away.



She answered, shouting "I'mnotlegalI'llcallyouwhenIgethome!!!" and with a click, she hung up.



Oops! I forgot Mimzi hasn't a headset for her phone and is fiercely paranoid about getting a ticket in the three blocks between our respective homes. About thirteen seconds later, my phone rang.



"Hello? Yes, what is it? Do you need me to come back?" She was shouting. Someday she might get used to the whole cell-phone thing but I'm not holding my breath.



"Mimzi, you're shouting," I said calmly. "I think Uncle Mack made a bit of a TP mess in the bathroom. I'm not mad or anything, but just wanted to let you know in case you wanted to come back and see it and maybe have a little talk with him," said I.



There was a pause, then a muffled exclamation, "Did you make a mess in the bathroom?!?!"



"Mess in the bathroom," came Uncle Mack's echolalic reply.



"Did you make a big TOILET PAPER MESS in Pie's bathroom?!?!?" Mimzi demanded again.



"Big toilet paper mess!" shouted Uncle Mack.



"I don't think that conversation's getting you anywhere Mimzi," I helpfully intoned.



"We'll be right there," Mimzi shouted into the phone. I could feel her scowl vibrating along my eardrums and rolling around inside of me to that place that, when she's in this mood, always feels happy that a) I'm a grown- up and b) I'm not the object of her ire.

But please, don't get me wrong. This wasn't a big deal as far as I was concerned. If anything, I'm glad Uncle Mack finds interesting ways of entertaining himself. And, I have been known to pull a prank or two involving toilet paper myself. The deal with Uncle Mack, though, is that if he gets away with something once he will do it over and over and over until something clicks off in his brain and neither he nor anyone else on the planet has any control over when, if ever, that little switch will click. Therefore, Mimzi always wants to nip any wayward behavior in the bud before it becomes weeks or months or years of misery for everybody.



When they arrived Biscuit, the Beans and I were all in the kitchen, the Beans in their unoutlandish pink highchairs enjoying ba-bas full of num-nums before retiring for Happy Nappy #2. Mimzi and Uncle Mack burst through the front door, Mimzi blazing along the warpath for the bathroom towing along poor Uncle Mack in her churning, burning wake. I glanced at Biscuit.



"Are you SURE you didn't do it, dude? Because Uncle Mack is about to catch you-know-what for it and if you just shut up and let him take the fall that's not going to work out well for you, Karmically speaking. You'll end up with a huge zit on prom night or something comparably evil." I just wanted to give him the opportunity of eleventh-hour salvation, not that I'd go any easier on him for it.



"No, I SWEAR I didn't do it. Unless, you know, I did it in my sleep," and he looked at me with those big, beautiful blues and we were good. Biscuit, you may remember, has no poker face. He desperately wants one but at the moment hasn't one in his arsenal. This works out very well for me in my role as Chief Household Justice.



In the bathroom Mimzi tore into Uncle Mack. "Did you do this? What did you do?!? Did you make this big TOILET PAPER MESS?!?!? Look at this ! Look at what you did!!!"



Uncle Mack stood there and took it like a good soldier. He considered the drawer full of shredded TP, looked up at Mimzi and then contritely returned his gaze back downward toward the TP drawer, fists squarely on his hips. In the midst of Mimzi's rant a little black and white dog, her belly close to the ground in an effort to remain invisible, slunk out from her sanctuary under my bed and scooted out her door to the backyard. Someone was tossing an awful lot of hell around and although she loved to run and chase stuff, she sure as heck didn't want to catch any of THAT!



And there I paused and so, coincidentally, did Mimzi.



"Hang on, Mimz,"



"Pie, did you look at this?" we called to each other simultaneously.



"Did you just see that?" I asked Biscuit.



"What?" Yep, he's still my same old little Biscuit.



"Never mind," and I stepped toward the back door.



"Katie?!? Katie, come!"



Clickety- clack went the doggie door. I made for the bathroom thinking that perhaps I shouldn't always be so quick to put the blame on a biped. Katie followed with her ears pricked up inquisitively, watching to see what was the plan. Would I like to play? She'd be glad to go get a ball if I would like to play.



"Katie, what did you do?" Oh, dear, that wasn't what she wanted to hear! Down went the ears, down went the tail, down went the nose to the ground and Katie turned tail and went right back out the doggie door. Clickety- clack.



"Did you take a good look at this? This doesn't look like something Uncle Mack would do," Mimzi was picking through the TP snow in the drawer that was a petite, August winter wonderland. She pulled out a half- shredded roll of toilet paper that looked as though something had been gnawing at it for quite some time.



"It must have been Katie. I thought it was weird, but thought maybe Uncle Mack was just getting creative," I said. "I mean, come on, it isn't like he hasn't had a TP fetish all his life," Yes, I was getting defensive, but it was entirely true. Uncle Mack has had a long, storied affair with all sorts of paper products: Kleenex, paper towels, computer paper, Kleenex, construction paper, origami paper, paper plates, and more Kleenex.



"I don't think he did this," Mimzi said.



"I think you're right-- it must have been Katie. She has been acting a little guilty lately but I figured it was because she's been getting on the sofa while I was out and that hairclip she ate last week. She must really need some more exercise," I said, wondering where in the heck I was going to find time to treat my TP-crazed Border Collie to some Frisbee therapy.



"I'm sorry, Uncle Mack," said Mimzi and I. He gave us an apathetic glare and started back for the front door. He wanted to go home for a salami sandwich. It made me wish that salami sandwiches made me feel better, but I now have other things on my plate to deal with. No salami pour moi.



I called Hubby on the Boo-phone.



"Guess what your daughter just did?"



"Aw, what did she do?" asked Hubby, excited to hear what new feat a Bean had just accomplished.



"Not a good thing. It's the quadruped. She's becoming quite the criminal. Just come in and look-- I don't want to ruin the surprise." Hubby said he'd come in soon and I got the Beans off to Happy Nappy.



Hubby came in a little while later and I sent him to the bathroom to witness the evidence of Criminal Katie's misdeed.



"Katie didn't do this." Hubby declared.



"Well, Uncle Mack didn't do it either and Biscuit SWEARS it wasn't him." I was freaking out. Had Biscuit finally mastered the poker face and I'd missed it? Were we on the cusp of the coup I'd feared for so long?



"No, honey, this is a mouse or something."



"What? Excuse me.... a MOUSE?"



A MOUSE in my HOUSE?!?!?!? No, absolutely NOT!!!!! In the garage, maybe, but in my HOUSE where my CHILDREN SLEEP? Oh, shit. No, no, no. No way!



"Yep, see? There's poop in there. It's a mouse."



"Yeah," chimed in the Biscuit, "I thought it looked like a nest."



Awesome! Lovely! Fantastic! DIRTY!!!!!!!!! I felt one big wave of howling fantods about to overcome me.



"Well then, you need to go to the hardware store and get a MOUSE TRAP. Or I can go to the store and get a MOUSE TRAP. Oh, my God, that's what we've been hearing at night, isn't it? A MOUSE? In our HOUSE!?!?!? In the WALLS! Eating our TOILET PAPER!!! Oh, my God, it's POOPING in our BATHROOM DRAWERS!!! UUGGHHHRRRRRRAAAARRRGHHH!!!! Oh, it's so GROSS!"



"Chill out Pie. It's not a big deal. Next time you're at the hardware store just get some mouse traps." said Hubby.



That was Tuesday. Today is Thursday. Hubby fixed the faucet Wednesday (which I suppose merited a trip only to the plumber, not the hardware store) and is planning a bike ride this afternoon. I still don't have any mouse traps, so the little mouse is still at large in my house.

This might really peeve another woman, but not me. No! This is an opportunity for me to strut my stuff as a true merciless slayer. Maybe I lost out at my chance to shine with the kitchen-sink situation but the universe is offering me another chance and I'm going to take it and run with it (carefully, because I am still an accident-prone girl). Because no matter how many misadventures I might get us into, and no matter how many projects I try to muddle through and thoroughly mess up before Hubby comes along and fixes whatever it is in about five minutes, he loves that I fearlessly try, no matter how stupid I feel when I'm doing it.

AND, when he asks himself why he ever got himself into this mess, which he inevitably will, I can say, "WHY? Because we LIKE you!!! M - O - U - S - E!!!!!!"