What To Do?

That’s the question and I know the answer.  But I can’t just toss it out.  He’d notice.  Just like he noticed the disappearance of the double boiler many, many years ago.  I don’t want to revisit that.  No one does.  The mere thought brings shivers.  

Here’s the problem:  A thoughtful person recently gave The Mister a lovely leather-bound notebook.  For making notes.  Obviously.  They didn’t know that he’s quite phone and computer literate and takes notes on those devices, not in a notebook.  But he greatly values the gift.  It sits at his spot at the breakfast table.  Every day, he touches it, leafs through it, admires and considers it until he returns it, sans notes, to its spot.  From my perspective, its time has come and it needs to go bye-bye.  Difficult as that may be.  The question at hand is “how?”

Hold on!  I think have a solution!  I remembered the torn and tattered bankies of the children’s youth.  You couldn’t just toss those things out.  No matter how badly you wanted to.

But we, as mothers, eventually learned that we could quietly snip off tiny bits of those bankies, every day, day after day, until there was nothing left.  Then, poof!  All gone.  No tears.  No tantrums.  No bankies.

If I apply the bankie lesson to the notebook, it means I’ll be carefully and quietly removing a page every day, each day, until there is nothing left.  It ‘ll be slow going.  I’ll have to cut pages alternately from the front, the middle, the back.  There can be nothing drastic.  Nothing noticeable.  Slow and easy wins the game. 

So, now the questions of “how” and “what” are answered.  The new question is “Why?”  And I have no good answer for that one.  If he wants to keep his little notebook, well then, he should certainly keep his little notebook.  Surely, I have better things to do than rattle that cage.   Don’t I?