The Seventy Five Dollar Banana.

Our friend S. was over last night and informed us that he could tell which of our children had last used the half bath (meant for guests, but my kids don't really get that), because there was a magazine opened to an article about Speedracer, an unflushed toilet and toilet paper on the floor. Aren't children precious? That's not as bad as what I found there earlier that day: a half finished cup of coffee and the same magazine, opened to an article about The next Narnia movie.

Speaking of my husband, he does have some strange bathroom habits. When O., our oldest child, was a baby I was home with him one day when the toilet overflowed. Believe it or not, I get a certain joy out of plunging a toilet. My dad and I once had a conversation that probably went on a little too long about the exhilaration one feels when the clogged toilet first makes that little suction sound after plunging. You know you're only a few moments away from a clear toilet and that your vigorous plunging efforts were not in vain. I have a whole system for plunging, which I'll be glad to explain, but not demonstrate. Anyhow, our toilet overflowed and, try as I might, I could not plunge it and, trust me, I have serious plunging skills. I called A. at work, seething with suspicion.

"What did you put in the toilet? I know you put something."

"What? The...uh...our toilet? Put something in it? Umm...nope, not a thing."

I knew he was lying, but his response to my assertion that I was going to call a plumber (who I would have to pay out of our then very meager funds) sealed the deal.

"Listen, I'll come home and wait for the plumber. Why don't you take the baby to the mall or something?"

My husband was and is cheap extremely thrifty. That's one of the things I love about him; I know we'll never starve. We had absolutely no disposable income then and he was telling me, a known impulse buyer with a credit card, to go to the mall. And he who never took a day of vacation was offering to come home from work in the middle of the day so I could do it. He hung up before I could tell him he was welcome to come home, but I was sure as he** going to stick around and see him humiliated by the plumbers.

He arrived mere seconds after I hung up the phone. We waited together for the plumber and I pretended I didn't notice as he paced the floor and chewed his fingernails, all the while trying to convince me to just go to the mall.
When the plumbers got there, it was clear that they, like any wife, could smell bullsh**. They looked both of us in the eye and asked for a confession. I knew I was innocent and met their gaze with confidence. My husband, on the other hand, said something like,

"At this point in time, no, I did not put any object in the toilet, herein, at this place in our home, in which I reside at this time. No, your honor, I do not believe that I put anything in that toilet that, in fact, did not belong there. I do not recall, it is certainly possible that...no object was placed in an inappropriate manner in any way by myself into that toilet."

Did I mention he's a lawyer? Just imagine a court reporter reading that one out loud. Don't you think he'd be a tiny bit better at lying? It was pathetic and we all looked at him in silence while he sputtered, still refusing to admit what he had done. The work began.

The plumbers plunged, more vigorously than I could ever dream of doing. They snaked. They used equipment that I've never seen before. Every now and then, they looked back at my husband, daring him to confess. He did not.

Just before the moment of truth, they gave him one last chance to confess. He started to reassert his innocence, but thought better of it.

"I might have put a banana peel in there."

He looked at his feet and we all looked at him with disgust at his ignorance. To this day, I regret what I did next. There are certain things that one never, ever needs to know about another person.

"Why, honey, just why would you put a banana peel in the toilet?"

We lived in a small apartment. The kitchen and garbage can therein were just steps away.

"Well, I was sitting there eating my breakfast and when I was finished, I just dropped it in. I thought because it was food that it was okay."

As if the words weren't enough, he did a vague physical impression of his actions. Multi-tasking is great, but is it too much to ask that one eat breakfast at a table? Or even standing at the kitchen counter? I almost felt sorry for him. The plumbers looked away, appalled. We've moved twice since then and, even though my husband still feels the sting of humiliation*, we use the same company. And they remember the banana peel. Apparently, my husband is a legend in the plumbing world, because one of the new guys told me he had heard about it. I am so proud.

Namasté, y'all!

* Mostly because I insist on telling the story over and over again.

Whine.

I hate buying toilet paper, hate it. There's nothing fun about it, it's not all that cheap and it's a hassle to carry, especially when you buy enormous quantities, like I do, because I don't want to have to go back to buy more for a long, long time. One of the happiest times in my life was when I bought something like 144 rolls of paper and didn't need more for almost two years. That was great. So, yesterday, I had to buy toilet paper. It was definitely time, because we had been passing one roll from bathroom to bathroom and, really, each bathroom should have its own roll, for convenience. I try to avoid big box stores, but I try to avoid buying toilet paper even more, so I get it wherever they sell the biggest package. I had to take Baby J; it was not fun. I was feeling put out.

I love that phrase, "put out." I'm pretty sure it's exclusively Southern. It's used to describe someone who acts like they're being asked to do something entirely unreasonable. When I was younger, and whining about cleaning my room or something even smaller, like putting my own dish in the dishwasher, my mother would say,

"Oh, stop acting so put out."

Like many things my mother used to always say, that's become one of my catchphrases, because I've become my mother. Anyhow, yesterday I was feeling put out, after having to buy toilet paper in a big box store with Baby J. Still feeling put out, I went to my favorite non-hippy grocery store to buy a mix to make cupcakes for the X-Man's birthday today. The big box store didn't have lemon cake mix, which is what he wanted. I am ashamed and embarrassed about what happened next.

I wasn't concerned about going into the second store*, because every grocery store in town, including that one, has free cookies for kids and shopping carts with trucks on the front for toddlers to ride in. The truck carts are hard to push, but well worth the effort when you have a toddler who likes to be held every moment of the day. Baby J loves trucks and cookies and started talking about them as we pulled into the parking lot. I was really looking forward to peeling him off of my neck, strapping him into the truck and quieting him with a cookie. When grocery stores first started putting the cookies out, I whined about it to anyone who would listen.

"Why must we reward kids with unhealthy food just for doing something they have to do anyway? It's normal to go to the store and they have to accept it. When I was little, they had broken cookies every once in a while, but it was a special treat and a surprise, not a given. Ugh."

Which is why my behavior yesterday is so embarrassing. When will I learn that acting superior never, ever pays? Baby J was in the truck, chanting,

"TOOKIE! TOOKIE! TOOKIE!"

There were no cookies. I waited at the deli, thinking for sure they would give me one. I was going to buy one if they had no free ones. I'm not an unreasonable person. I thought everyone behind the counter was busy. Baby J got louder. And I noticed one of the employees pouring himself a Mountain Dew and poking at it with a straw. That really got my goat (another Southern expression for you). I marched over and said, "Excuse me!" rather aggressively. I asked about the cookies. I got a long, boring explanation about people taking more than one and how they just couldn't put cookies out anymore because of blah, blah, blah, blah. I said that was fine, but that I was switching grocery stores, forever.

I was going to buy the cake mix anyway when Baby J informed me that it might be best if we left the store, right that second. On my way out, I ran into L, a nice, polite lady from my church. I needed to vent, so I told her why I was leaving. L. has three (redheaded) children of her own and sympathized with my plight. She thought I should talk to a manager, but Baby J was about to lose it, so I had to go.

The very efficient L. sent a very brave grocery store employee out to my car to explain the cookie situation and ask me to continue shopping at the store, which I will. Mainly because she told me the cookies will be there in the future.

L. and the grocery store employee should start a PR firm; they saved the day. I called her on my cell phone and left a message, apologizing for my temper tantrum and thanking her for talking me down off the ledge and saving me from having to find another store. She left a message back saying that she hadn't noticed any sort of tantrum and that she had done similar. Did I mention what a kind person she is?

Namasté, y'all!

* I should have been concerned. It was five o'clock and I have three children. When will I learn? maybe next week. *sigh*

We're having our house painted. It's one of those totally un-fun things you get to buy when you are old. I can hear my sister in law already, telling me to stop whining about the "high class headache" or even better, my friend M saying, "Waaahhh! My p--y itches!" Which totally cracks me up, every single time, even typing it. Anyhow, we are lucky to have a great house to paint, a good painter to paint it and the money to pay for it. I get that. I do. But still, Mexico might have been fun.

There are a lot of good things about having the house painted. I just walked into the living room and noticed that, now that the front porch ceiling is painted light blue, there's a kind of glow coming from the windows. It actually brightens up the whole living room, all the better to showcase the new lamp I plan on getting (totally copying Aunt Ginny, so I need to ask her permission first!) If you have an opinion as to which lamp is cooler, please post it in the comments section (yes, my imaginary friends, you must find a way to respond!) Here are the lamps:


I like them both, but I think the double one would give off more light, because it has two lights. Duh. But that's the one my aunt has. Is it stalkerish to copy someone's furniture? It's not like buying the same outfit. I mean, no one brings a lamp to a party (unless it's a shower and the lamp is a gift, but that's taking it too far, so let's just drop it. The subject, not the lamp.) I think the lamp will look totally awesome with the glow from the porch, but I digress, which is nothing new.

I also got a mini vacation, courtesy of the painters. I was lying on my bed reading while Baby J slept and I could hear two of the painters singing and talking in Spanish just outside my bedroom window. Although I really should take a Spanish class at Tech to remember the Spanish I knew, I haven't done that, so I couldn't understand a word. And I find it very relaxing to hear people talking and have no reason to really listen. That's why I like getting my nails done at the mall, where Lin (not her real name, but the one she gives out to us honkeys), her sister and her husband speak Vietnamese while they work. They actually are Vietnamese, by the way, they didn't learn the language just so they could have private conversations at work. They laugh a lot, so it could be that they're making fun of me, but I suspect they have more interesting stuff to talk about. Anyhow, lying on my bed, half reading, half sleeping and listening to people sing in Spanish made me feel like I was on vacation somewhere awesome.

But then Baby J woke up, the painters started sanding or drilling or something loud and I had to pee. I don't know why I always have to pee when it really isn't a great time. Baby J likes to keep me company when I go to the bathroom. He takes after his father that way. One of the main reasons we moved to this house from our old one is that it has four times as many toilets. I, mistakenly, thought that this meant that I had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the bathroom. Serendipitously, my toilet is really hard to find. You have to travel through my bedroom, through my closet, through a room with a tub and a shower and, if you haven't been distracted by then, you finally reach the toilet, which is housed all by itself in a tiny little room. My room. But, and this shouldn't have come as a surprise, my kids and their friends will come from the farthest reaches of the house, from the deepest depths of Lego coma, from the most elaborate game of dress up ever played...to take a crap in my toilet. And, given the attention span it takes to find my toilet, I 'll never understand why none of them can hold it together long enough to flush (Note: I just read this part to O and he pointed out that he does too flush, but X does not. True, all true.)

So that's what's happening here. Namasté, y'all!