Remember that funny children’s rhyme about the fly?

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly..I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – Perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – Perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a bird; 
How absurd to swallow a bird!She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – Perhaps she’ll die!

There was an old lady who swallowed a cat; 
Imagine that! She swallowed a cat!She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – Perhaps she’ll die!

It goes on and on of course until the old lady swallows a cow and actually does die. What a great example this little ditty is of the consequences of a series of increasingly poor decisions that can erupt from the need to address one seemingly small, original problem. It also highlights how difficult it is to stop the momentum force of that chain reaction.

Makes me think of our boat..

When we moved back to Florida over ten years ago, we thought it would be a great idea to buy a boat. Our only (self imposed) constraint was that we wanted it to fit in our garage so we wouldn’t have to pay to have it stored..sounds logical.

Fast forward to this week and my husband and I were deciding whether or not to invest a few thousand dollars into two, custom Bimini tops for the boat to better protect us from the sun. That discussion led to a revelation and a realization that we should sell the boat instead. You see the truth is that while the boat was a great fit for our garage, it was never a great fit for our family. It was too small to safely take out to the ocean to fish, a big bummer for the guys, and it didn’t have a head (bathroom) or cabin which was a big bummer for the girls. Because of these, and other, limitations we didn’t use it very much. In hindsight it was obvious, that choosing a boat primarily based on the ability to fit it into our garage had been the original blunder.

Instead of continuing to add exponentially more expensive “bells and whistles” to a boat that would never be what we needed or wanted, we finally decided to admit to the original mistake and stop making further ones..so yeah, it’s up for sale.

This is what it looks like when you are about to swallow the dog

to eat the cat

that gobbled the bird

that ate that original fly..

but you don’t.