All good things must come to an end

I suppose :-)

Today I had to buy a carton of cigarettes. Nothing much remarkable in that if you're a smoker except that this is the first carton I've had to buy in about six months. To be sure, I have been smoking during all that time. As the Americans say, nobody likes a quitter which is enough reason not to quit :-)

But seriously, we've had a lot of people, most of them non-smokers, travelling to the Philippines so I asked them to bring me back cartons of smokes. It costs, in US dollars, roughly the same to buy a single pack here or a whole carton there. Thus I had a steady stream of ciggies coming in from overseas and all, so far as I can tell, completely legal.

Today I finally cracked the last pack in the last carton. Oh, the horror! All day I debated the question in even the most dedicated smokers mind; should I stop smoking? And, as all smokers do, I rationalised. The new baby (not mine) is due this week or the next. I even made it all the way home, knowing I had only a dozen smokes left, without buying the new carton.

I walked into chaos. Sometime this afternoon Morgan decided to rearrange her room; the reason given was to make it easier to cope with a baby living up there with her. But, being Morgan, nothing would do but she had to make it into the ultimate histrionic performance complete with fits of tears and the vomiting up of the entire contents of her room into the rest of the apartment.

Thus boxes and shoe racks and piles of clothing strewn throughout the kitchen and living room. That might not sound so bad until you learn that she'd blocked off all paths leading to anywhere but her own room!

I'm disinclined to be all that forgiving where she's concerned; she used up her credit with me years ago so maybe I'm being unreasonable, but when I have to move a dozen boxes full of assorted crap before I can safely essay the stairs down to our bedroom I think she's pushed her luck rather too far.

She pushed it a lot further. We went out to dinner, my wife and I. Cooking with the kitchen in the state it was would have been an exercise in living dangerously; you really do need a clear path from stove to sink.

All of which is a thin justification that I know doesn't pass muster for buying a carton of smokes. Thin or not the smokes were purchased and I'm half way through the second ciggy out of that carton as I type.

When we came home from an unhurried dinner it seemed no progress had been made.

Of course not; Morgan has no reason to consider the convenience of others. Thus it was that at midnight she was still moving furniture and boxes around. Mom had retired at 11 but was unable to sleep. Did she think it had anything to do with the noise coming from the room above ours?

I reckon you could more easily pull the teeth from the jaws of a conscious tiger than you could get Mom to admit that the little princess gets on her wick! And it would certainly be safer to attempt the dental work than to attempt the confession!

So I played hardball. If the couch I sit upon when I watch TV is piled high with the refuse of her room and she hasn't bothered to ask me ahead of time I'll make waves. Some stern words to the effect that if it wasn't cleared along with a path from the rest of the apartment to the couch by my usual time for settling in had their effect. She knows I'm perfectly capable of carrying her stuff to the rubbish bin! I've done it before and I'll do it again if need be.

Oh well, at least the little princess provides me with the perfect excuse to keep on smoking! Whatever shall I do when she finally moves out? Oh yeah, I know, I'll enjoy the peace and quiet and lack of drama. I may even need to watch some soap operas[^].