Good Intentions

When three independent women of a certain age move in together, the potential for disaster is great.

"Rules," I said. "We must have rules."

"Can we have a dog?" Judy asked. "I love dogs."

"And weekly meetings," said Nancy. "We must talk about our deepest feelings in weekly meetings."

"A cat would be nice," Judy said. "I love cats."

"Maybe we should write an intention statement," I suggested.

"Rabbits. Rabbits can be toilet trained. Can I have a rabbit?"

That was a year and a half ago. We've had one weekly meeting -- it was so awful Judy cried and I stomped out and Nancy slunk away to play her ukulele. Somewhere along the line we all wrote intention statements and put a red stick-on dot under the kitchen table because a friend who knows about Feng Shui said it would be an eternal reminder of our good thoughts. As I recall, the dot fell off the second day; none of us can remember our intentions; and we got a new kitchen table.

As for the rules -- well, that was pretty much a no-go from the start. It was at our one and only weekly meeting that we made a list of who would do what chore. Judy said she would vacuum the living room once in a while and take the garbage out on days she wasn't working if someone would remind her. Nancy said she would sweep the front porch and separate the recyling. Which left -- well, everything else in the Sharon column. Hence the stomping out.

And yet, here we are 18 months into this little experiment and somehow the house always looks great, the dishes get done, garbage makes it to the garbage can and we still have no toilet-trained rabbits. I'm not sure how that happened.