One Thing Leads To Another

The way we do things around here:
Sometime in the middle of this past winter, I asked my wife to come sit next to me on our picnic bench. We were in the midst of a disagreement, and I offered the seat as a gesture of peace. When we both sat down, there was a creak and a snap. The dry rot beneath us made sitting on the bench an impossibility and spilled us onto the deck. The slapstick nature of our predicament put an end to the grumbling and hurt feelings as we picked ourselves up off the ground and started to consider how to move ahead. This was the moment that we gave the metaphorical mouse a metaphorical cookie.
The metaphorical mouse was able to hold off on his demand for metaphorical milk until the spring thaw, when my wife and I found ourselves once again out on the porch, and a quick assessment of the bench let us know that nothing had happened to make it any more sturdy since we left it there so many months ago. As is my wont, I began dismantling the remnants of the bench with my bare hands and stopped when I came to the part where there was actually solid wood: the slats. In my mind, I determined that there were enough to make a new table or a bench. Once I had all that nice straight wood laid out on the deck, my wife chimed in to say that making two benches would solve a whole host of problems, at least when it comes to hosting. As is our wont.
The metaphorical mouse wasn't done. He needed a metaphorical straw, which was the construction of these two new benches. Which naturally gave rise to the furniture inside our house, specifically the big blue couch that had served us so well for so many years. It had been the back wall of many New Years Eve forts, and its pullout bed had tortured a great many house guests. Once the metaphorical straw had been given to that metaphorical mouse, what was left but for us to go out furniture shopping. This was the mirror demanded by the mouse to check for a milk mustache, and a moment for us to reflect upon "grown up" furniture. After a tour of Ikea and its many styles and umlauts, we came home to rest, when that metaphorical mouse asked for a pair of metaphorical scissors to give his whiskers a trim. That was when we noticed that love seat we had dragged home from the curb up the street so many years back. It was tired, old, but part of the furniture.
Now we were thinking about it. The next day found us at the used furniture store, where the owner insisted she was in the mood to wheel and deal. A matching love seat and couch, and she would even pay our sales tax. Which meant that we needed to decide on delivery, and that metaphorical mouse and the broom he needed to sweep up the trimmings sounded a lot like renting a truck and doing the lifting by ourselves. All of which made us all very thirsty. So we asked for a glass of iced tea. Because we were out of milk.
But full of new furniture.
Get your own milk, rodent.