If You Give a Mom a Project

This post is inspired by the children's book, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," and my good friend, Catherine Denton, who always said this would make a good post.

If you give a mom a project during Christmas break, she will pick the bedroom closet. She will pull everything out of it first thing in the morning while the kids are watching TV in order to organize it.

After she gets the closet empty, the kids will start to ask for breakfast, so she will head to kitchen in her pajamas to pour them a bowl of cereal.

When she opens the refrigerator to get out the milk, she will notice the sausage links she bought the day before and think pancakes would be really good with sausage.

So she will mix up the batter and pour a pancake into the skillet. While breakfast is cooking, she will decide to check her email.

When she checks her email, she will remember the blog she started the night before and decide to finish it. Pictures would be good with the post, she thinks, so she does an Internet search for clip art.

While searching the Internet for clip art, she will smell burning pancakes and remember breakfast, which she will narrowly save.

After breakfast she will tell the children to get dressed and decide she should get dressed herself. She will put on clothes and go to the bathroom to wash her face.

When she washes her face in the bathroom sink, she will notice the sink needs cleaning and grab a disinfectant wipe to clean it.

Once the sink is clean, she will see that there is still plenty of usable solution left on the wipe and will not want to throw a half used wipe away, so she will wipe down the bathroom cabinets.

When she wipes down the cabinets, she will notice the bathroom trash needs to be taken out. And since she is taking the bathroom trash, she may as well take the kitchen trash.

And if she's going to take the kitchen trash, she should check the fridge for old leftovers to go out with it. When she opens the refrigerator door, she will see the box of chocolate covered cherries she gave her husband for Christmas and will eat one.

"A cup of coffee would be good with this," she will think, so she will pour herself a cup with sugar and milk and decide to drink it with the new decorating magazine her neighbor gave to her.

After she reads the magazine and drinks her coffee, she will put the milk back in the fridge and remember that she was supposed to clean out the old leftovers. She will notice the juice spill in the bottom of the fridge left there the week before by her five-year-old. So she will decide to clean the spill. And if she is going to clean the spill, she might as well wipe down the shelves, too.

After she cleans the refrigerator shelves and throws away all the old food, her sink will be full of dishes from the old leftovers and breakfast and she will want to load the dishwasher.

But before she can load the dishwasher, she must unload the clean dishes from the day before, so she starts to unload. When she opens her cabinet door to put away the clean dishes, the Tupperware lids will come falling out on top of her, and she will realize she needs to organize the kitchen cabinets.

While she is organizing the cabinets, the children will come into the kitchen asking for lunch, and she will have to stop what she is doing to feed them. And of course, the five-year-old's favorite Tinkerbell cup with the curly straw will be dirty because the dishwasher is still full, and she will cry, and the mom will have to wash it by hand before she can make lunch.

After lunch, the sink will be overflowing with dishes and the mom will need a bathroom break because of the coffee she had earlier, so she will go to the bathroom before tackling the growing kitchen catastrophe.

When she goes to the bathroom, she will look in the mirror and notice her eyebrows need plucking, so she will grab the tweezers and set to work.

Tweezing her eyebrows will remind her of putting on makeup, and putting on makeup will remind her of the date she is supposed to go on with her husband that night. She will remember she needs to call the sitter and confirm a time for her to come over to watch the kids, so she will reach into her pants pocket for her phone.

Her phone will not be there, and she will remember she left it charging in her bedroom, so she will go to her bedroom to get it. When she picks up her phone, she will see she has four messages from her husband.

After spending twenty minutes texting back and forth to her husband, she will look around and notice the contents of her closet are still lying all over the floor, so she will decide to get back to work on her project.