A Girl...

Potty Blogging

Online journaling in its most intimate form: Live from the bathroom while the writer is in the midst of her, ahem, business.

The business of merging medicine cabinets, of course.

You don't think I've spent the last hour on the toilet, emerging only to retrieve my laptop because this—this extraordinary poo—deserves public exposure? As if. This is a family blog. And in my family, we don't poo.*

And speaking of families, now that Simon and I have combined toiletries and related body products, together we have enough bottles of sunblock to protect your entire extended brood with two coats of lotion each and, while we're at it, use those same bottles to teach your youngest how to count up to 50 by fives.

The current inventory of the under-the-sink bathroom cabinet is as follows:

Shampoo: 3 bottles
Conditioner: 3 bottles
Hairspray: 3 bottles
Moisturizer: 4 bottles
Floss: 4 reels
Neutrogena Build-a-Tan, which I have never used and have no memory of purchasing because WHY?: 2 bottles
Contact lens solution, large: 2 bottles
Contact lens solution, small: 2 bottles
Contact lens overnight cases: 4
Face wash: 2 bottles
Body lotion: 4 bottles
Tampons: about a thousand
Q-tips: about a thousand million

This kind of puts the 80 rolls of living room toilet paper into perspective, doesn't it? Apparently I have some kind of undiagnosed disorder centered on running out of bath products and subsequently dying a pore-clogged, scaly-elbowed, static-haired, tragically unglamorous death. Unhygeniphobia.

Now that I'm forced to look at all the bottles lined up Busby Berkeley style (did I forget to mention that all the shampoo is the same, all the conditioner is the same, all the hairspray is the same, etc.?), I vaguely remember being in Aisle 7 at Target several dozen times and feeling overcome with a veritable compulsion to buy more and more Thermasilk (also always accompanied by a temper fit over their having discontinued the "volumizing" formula, which totally made my hair bob like a very blonde and shiny buoy. Or something), and suddenly it's not so surprising that I'm stocked up on so many Gillette disposable razors you'd think I planned to be buried beside them so that I might spend an eternal afterlife with silky-smooth stems.

Although all of Simon's hair and face products number in ones and occasional twos, he has his own bathroom supply vices. Courtesy of him, we are the proud owners of about seventy-five allergy pills and two thousand pain killers. Sneezeophobia? Headacheophobia? More like treatment for painintheneck-itis—the pain in the neck being me, the one with all the Thermasilk (size: jumbo) and also all the scowling and general unpleasantness.

This has been a rough couple of weeks, as you may have gathered, and I've been pretty much laid out from the stress of everything between the time we dropped Stan off at his new home (no longer temporary!; my coworker and her boyfriend luuuuuv him and can't bear to live without him—hooray!) to about an hour ago, when I freaked out because Simon poured my favorite vodka marinara sauce onto the pasta that I wanted to eat plain. (He thought "plain" meant no tortellini with yucky filling; I meant "plain" like pasta. cooked. on a plate. fin.) Anyway, when I caught sight of the pasta covered with the smelly, slimy goo sauce (which I normally want to smush my face in because it's so delicious), I ran off to the bedroom and snuggled the TROL** and despaired over how I could possibly go on any longer when the world was filled with abberations like saucey pasta. Woe!

Poor Simon. He must think I've lost my marbles. (Which I did. Just before I saw the offending pasta, I picked up a box of two-be-unpacked knickknacks and spilled decorative marbles everywhere. Woe and misery!)

Luckily, Simon was not the only one who noticed I was acting completely batty, so after only about five minutes in the bedroom sulking, I emerged, washed the sauce off my pasta like a crazy person, ate it (with a little olive oil and parmesan), and gave myself a much-needed attitude adjustment. We've all been much happier since, including Eve, who is now reveling in the company of the six toy mice that until three days ago had been stuck behind a bookshelf since 2004 or so.

We're adjusting. It's just not like we thought it'd be at all.

*This probably deserves an entry of it's own, but now that I no longer have my apartment, I've experienced a bit of "fecal anxiety." Like, I have to plan for my "time" the way I would if I were sharing a hotel room with a bunch of strangers. But Simon and I have been practically living together for over a year now, so what the hell?

**Tootsie Roll of Love, remember?

[Day 2 of NaBloPoMoFroYo just under the wire. Who do I need to talk to about making our stolen wireless more reliable?]

Posted by Leah at November 2, 2006 11:58 PM