I recently bought some single-ply toilet paper. It was an accident. We are a two-ply family. I got overly excited in the paper aisle at Target and bought the million-roll pack of the wrong kind. Put a big red SALE sign in front of me and I shoot more adrenaline than I can handle. We now have so much of this borderline abusive toilet paper that each reader of this entry can get a roll. Please send me your email address and I’ll scan it over to you.
I don’t mean to diminish in any way the necessity to our culture of one-ply ass wipes, but really, it’s like we’re back in public school. Or prison. The way I saw it, my options were to stack it on a distant shelf until Armageddon, or put it right on the rod in each of our three bathrooms so it gets used up quickly. We all know what the sane choice would be and so we all know which option I chose. The good thing is it looks nice and plump sitting there on the rod with its 1000 sheets per roll. The bad thing is it has the power to remove our identity. If butts have prints like fingers do, we are now unrecognizable. They’ll need our dental records.
After I loaded the fresh supply, Husband came out of the master bathroom with a quizzical expression on his face and then didn’t say anything. He just looked at me like, Why do you hate us? Hoping the moment would pass, I got busy making the bed just the way he likes it, with my side neatly tucked in and his hanging loose like a bulldog’s face. I heard his footsteps on the stairs and worried he might be trying his luck in the first floor loo and we all know how that worked for him. Then I started to think, oh no, what if he winds up in the basement bathroom? No one EVER uses that one. He won’t find comfort there either.
In addition to which, remember the cricket problem we had in our basement? Well, there are still a few hiding in dark corners waiting to act like crickets every chance they get. But the guy at the hardware store sold me this bionic bug spray with one of those long tubes attached to the nozzle that looks like a coffee stirrer from 7-Eleven and I’ve gotten so I can nail them from five feet away. They’ll hop a few more times in a zigzag and then stagger over to Husband’s exercise chair and expire underneath it. They actually look very restful lying there with their hoppers pointed up toward the acoustic tile ceiling.
I don’t know why they all go die under that Nordic-Chair. I know I feel like I’m dying when I use it so maybe it sends out that kind of vibe. Husband wants to know why I haven’t called an exterminator, but I actually feel pretty empowered walking around with that 7-Eleven nozzle like some Ghostbuster. It’s got a Zen quality to it: I am one with the cricket and the cricket is mine. It’s even to the point where I can sense when one is nearby. You know how that is, like when you’re on the subway and you feel somebody’s eyes on you without even looking. That can be disturbing but it’s actually better than the cricket thing. No matter how creeped out you are by a subway perv, at least you don’t have to pick up his dead carcass with one-ply toilet paper.
Leaving comes to mind in Daughter’s Featured Fotos
