Answer: Get her a boyfriend.
Now Drip Dry is what you might call a jack-of-all-trades.
Although he's an electrical engineer by day, he's also known to many as the guy who never met an appliance he couldn't fix (evidence of such is the fact that I'm still using the same vacuum cleaner he owned when I married him 22 years ago.) He also is my favorite electrician, wallpaper hanger, painter, and mason.
So earlier this school year when his darling teenage daughters asked him to update their old "playroom" in our basement so that they could have a place to hang out with their new friends, he went to work at a frantic pace - ripping up carpet, spackling, sanding, and painting. . . the only piece left to complete was installing new carpeting.
Until the day . . .
What day? you ask.
The day he walked downstairs and saw his prized little daughter on the family room couch with her "friend-who-is-a-boy" (I told you, we're under strict instructions not to call him her boyfriend!)
That was the day of the work stoppage. . . the day that every effort to complete that new room was abruptly halted. . . . the day that I (their over-taxed, over-tired, and over-spun-mother) had to start fielding 101 questions from them.
Why isn't Dad finishing the basement for us? When's he going to put the carpet down? Why can't you do it?????
I tried to deploy my most trusted weapon - procrastination - but those two girls beat me yet again.
They had their two friends-who-just-happen-to-be-boys (I like to call them Thing 1 and Thing 2) hook up the t.v., d.v.d. player and x-box - and are all now in my basement watching t.v. with their feet up on the couch.
Please tell me. . . . have you ever met a teenage boy who would care if there were carpeting under his feet when he's sitting with one of my daughters on the couch???? All the better to lie down with, my dear. . . . . .
Yikes! Get me the number of that next-day carpet installer! Quick!
