Daytime TVers Are Sick

Watching daytime TV for me is not a habit. If I’m up before work (like that ever happens) it’s because I have a dentist appointment, or a court date or I have to get a check to somebody before they shut off our…I mean to say, pay a bill. This time I was at the dentist. He has a TV in his ceiling - which I think is the coolest thing since cool things started being invented. Like ear plugs. Very cool.

I want a TV in our ceiling. I should buy a flat screen, I think. If I just hang our current TV it will ride only a few inches above the fluffy pillows and that leaves me little maneuvering room. At least I wouldn’t need my glasses.

Now, when I am at the dentist I am on as much laughing gas as I can be on. And when the assistant leaves to get me the remote or some other imaginary task on which she has been sneak-a-ly sent by yours truly, I’m on even more. I would never be one of these pregnant woman who say “just a little tea and I'm sure the birthing of this ten pounder will be smooth as his gigantic bottom.” It would be 'Put in my epidural at three months ‘cause I don’t want to feel even a hangnail for the next year of my life.' I don't want pain. I want laughter. Someone in this office besides my dentist's accountant should be laughing, and I am going to darn well make sure it’s me.

Somehow FOX News turns up on the monitor. I left it on because it’s so darn funny. The first commercial was for fresh catheters now sent to your home. Sign me up, I say. Who wants a used one? Love can be shared, a straw, possibly can be shared if it’s with the right person, but this is going to far. I want my own catheter, I say to myself and apparently to everyone in the office including a five year old kid who now wants one too.

Next commercial is diabetic supplies, and next is medical insurance. Even funnier! Then Congress gets on and tells me why I should move to Canada for the health care. That wasn’t exactly the point of the interview, but that’s what I got out of it. They are very healthy in Mooseridge and Saskatoon these days. Turn up that gas!

Why are they showing this much bad health on TV? Obviously they, the TV folk, think everyone home watching at this time of day is bed-ridden, old, dying, or just in need of freshly packaged catheters. (Does somebody really use theirs again? The dishwasher, ya think? Next to the sippy cup?)

What happened to all the dental school and technical school ads as well as the new lawyer ads of yesteryear? Oh for the innocent times of ‘sue your neighbor for all he’s got?’ Nostalgia ain’t what is used to be.

With modern technology we can watch all our favorite television shows from days past, but at a horrible price. The last time I saw the Cosby Show I put in for a new subscription to AARP magazine and ordered a stair elevator catalogue - cause I never know when these brittle bones of mine are just going to give up the ghost. I’ve also got a stash of age cream and VerySensitiveStuff Tooth Paste from when I spent an afternoon at Little House On The Prairie. Exactly how sick are we Daytime TVers?

Maybe I should go to that new doctor at the mall with my coupon from Readers Digest. I could get a vitamin B-12 shot and have half the magazines there stuffed into my Happy Camper Medical Supply duffel bag I won from channel 12 Hospital Bingo.

I’m also thinking about pre-ordering a liver , but I’ll save that for another episode of Matlock.

Big Pond In A Small Fish

The FDA, FBI, MADD, ASPCA - in fact many an acronym have recommended that healthy humans should drink 64.oz of water a day.

A day.

The closest to that goal that I have ever been is when I almost drowned in a neighbors pool. A 16 year old girl pulled me out of the deep-end and somehow, in the whole mess of drowning and pulling, I lost my trunks.

I remember picking them out at the store. I got them because not only were they my Jr High schools colors, but because they didn’t make me look like a bean pole. This was important to me at the time because I was a bean pole. But the color and pattern didn’t really camouflage as well as I had hoped for because I lost them while drowning in a pool.

When I realized that I had almost died, I was not concerned in the least. It wasn’t because I had a solid religious core and was not afraid of death. It was that I had just been trunk-less in front of sisters, mothers and a 16year old girl.

Oh, and to the point, I ingested a lot of water.

It has never happened to me again - that much water anyway. I was trunk-less on two other occasions, one not my fault and the other involving a cliff, theatre people and some very cold water a whole lot further down than I had thought.

I don't really like water. If God had intended us to drink water he would not have stood by and watched those heathens create Diet-Coke. Hasn’t anyone read the labels on this stuff? There is nothing in it. No vitamins, minerals, sodium, carbonation, corn starch, fiber - nothing.

At least the water I store downstairs in big 50 gallon drums that have been there since I last had money to spend on storage (which has been awhile) has something in it. I don’t know what it is, but I heard splashing last week in the basement when the TV was off that once.

I bought the containers cheep from my brother in-law who works with criminals and by criminals I mean he teaches high school. Why I’m okay storing water in containers that are spray painted with “Do not store near humans or open flame." is beyond me. That’s gonna be yummy. I keep it so just in case all the water locally starts transmitting viruses and poisons we have something to kill ourselves with quicker.

Just an FYI for those acronym people: Did you know that water has no taste? In fact, if there was any taste in your mouth from before is sucks the flavor out of that and leaves you with nothing. Just an FYI.

Besides, I get plenty of water. What do they think the ice in my Humongous Swig is made of?

Drive Me Crazie!

I pay good money to the public school system in taxes for them to teach my daughter to drive so that I don’t have to risk my life for free and get nothing out of it but being dead. This is a perk for which I pay through my nose.

Also, or in addition to, I don’t think I should have to sacrifice my calm day-off on the ride to church for Annie, my lovely daughter, to get her drivers license three months early because the school system is overridden with mere children who want to be out riding.

If she waits three months - one corn growing season or 30 days less than the time uncle Randolph has left in jail, she could let the well paid professionals of the public school system deal with her squealing, and anything but 10 and 2 hand positioning, and her spelling everything with an “i.e.” which doesn’t have anything to do with her driving, but since we’re talking about the public school system I will mention this.

Also she keeps getting beat up - which doesn’t much support my stance of letting the good folks of the public school system assist with her learning to drive, though her penmanship with a spray can has greatly improved, as has her defensive posturing and street smarts in public hallways.

I actually took her out to drive… let’s see, it was last week when I had a pill left over from seeing the dentist.

“Turn left here, Honey.”
“No”
“Turn left here, Honey.”
“I can’t. There is a car in front of us three miles away.”
“Turn left here,…Honey.”
“But then I cant go to the Darie freeze.”
“Dairy is spelled with a y. Turn left here.”
“I cant handle it when you yell at me! It freaks me out! You promised you wouldn’t yell at me. I should have gone with Mom.”
“Yes you should have. Turn left here.”
“Do you want sprinkles on your tastie freeze, or no?”

It’s a little scary when we pull up behind a car with a bumper sticker for Militant-Macho Farmer-Republican-Concealed-Weapons.com. Annie pulls so close and waves. I thought the driver would get out and pummel us, or at least yell obscenities at us. But grandma just waves back through her rear-view mirror. Hurrah for the left over pill.

Now Annie is saying that she prefers to wait for the public school system if it means she doesn’t have to have me drive with her again.

Problem solved.

Disclaimer: My wife wants me to thank the public school system for all their caring and hard work.

Famous Potatoes

It’s a well known fact that my wife wants to move to Idaho. When I log into the computer at home she has a lovely scenic view of the Tetons on the screen saver. I had to tell her that the Tetons are in Wyoming. "Yes, that’s true” she said, “but you have to drive through Idaho to get there."

So, I tell my friend at work that we’re going far north for the weekend to humor my wife. He makes some crack about hicks and beer and tube tops and something about a trailer park that I didn’t understand.

I interrupt this for a bit of history. I am from Idaho. I like being from Idaho. Being that I am from Idaho I have license to say anything I choose about the gem state. I have paid my dues, I have walked the bowlegged walk, I have talked the laid-back country talk, I have eaten my potatoes,attended the rodeo and liked it.

But unless you have done the same, there will be no speaking bad about Idaho. That is my job.

Back to the story. I had to put my friend on notice.

If you’re from Rhode Island and you start into a Pocatello joke you’d better be prepared for… Well that’s not really a good example. Have you been to Pocatello? Nothing satitisfyes like a good Pocatello joke. But say, if you start into your joke with “So I was in the Sawtooths and this local walked by with a carp in one hand and asparagus in the other and says…” I will stop you right there and ask to see your license.

It’s like my church. No one tells a good Mormon joke like I can. I have my little license in my wallet. Or like my family. I can make fun of Aunt Enid who collects different shaped yams, but she off limits to you.

And if you start into a member of my family without approval, you’d better lace up the runners.

When I was in jr high I tried to sit at the back of the bus with the cool kids. It made the long bus ride home from school meaningful somehow. Fortunately, In Idaho we could drive at 14 so my time on the bus was short lived, but somewhere in that bus someone said something negative about my older sister. I would like to tell you that even at that early age I had a well developed since of decency and a sharp left hook.

But I didn’t. I would like to tell you that I beat the crap out of the nay sayer, but I didn’t. I was too small and way too wussy. But I was mad about it! No one can pierce their lips like a Cheney offended. That’s the second thing I learned from my grandma Vera. The first thing was that cats don’t dry out in the microwave.

Looking back on it, maybe being mad was the enough. Enough to set a precedent. No one is going to speak ill of my family or religion without me having something to say about it.

The Canadian Rockies are on my screen saver now. I told my wife that the Canadian Rockies are not in Idaho. But it’s a nice drive. And on our way there I have a few jokes to tell the kids.

So, this Mormon walks into a bar in Pocatello and says…

Not Elvis

When I get stressed or embarrassed either at home or at work, I am told that I start to sound like a king addressing his court. It is a lovely court to be sure, but one not in love with the king, who distances himself from those lowly - like King Henry the Ate did (the fat one), or king Louis the XIV, who loved roman numerals and enjoyed a slice or two of cake with his wife. The point is, I sound like a jerk.

“If you please, my people, assistance is required presently at till number five, sooner being better than later. Good day.”

It happens when someone asks me a question that I don’t have the answer to, or because I think I am looking foolish. I break out in a bad impression of haughty English royalty (as opposed to kindly and humble rulers) that ends up sounding more like Dame Edna being given a royal wedgie. I truly don't mean for it to happen. It just does. It must be all those English folk I hung out with while sorting potatoes in the fields of Idaho as a youth.

“One moment and we will confer with one of our resources. Please remain situated just here, love”

For some reason speaking in a hyper-professional manner gives me a feeling that I am in control of the situation, an illusion that I cherish. I discovered my need for control during an afternoon of self-realization while watching divorce court and eating popsicles. I guess my feeling is that if the Love Boat is headed down, and I mean Titanic-ing down, I am the happy Cruise Director. I am in charge and we are going to play shuffle board until we all win free drinks and someone fixes the bothersome gash in the ship's side. My family says it freaks everyone out - except the British; they are used to being told what to do by folks with bad teeth.

If I have the ability to throw on some music when I am embarrassed or feeling put-on - or just to soothe the savage me, I play one of my thousands of CD’s of which I have seventeen. The rest were stolen after I left them in someone’s car. They must have dropped me off and drove directly to the CD exchange store. I later found some of my CD's with my name still written in the middle of the “Sold for Drug Money” section. My current collection consists of some classical music and vocal jazz. My kids call this my angry music. Why they deride anything that keeps me from wringing their little necks while speaking British is beyond me.

To their very minuscule credit, they are getting better at judging my moods - not that normal people should have to tiptoe around me nor judge what to say or what not to. But these are my kids and mood-reading can mean life or no life for them. It used to be that during an intense conversation on sweeping the floor and why it hasn’t been done for days one of them would pipe up with “Can I paint my room orange today?”

The King denies the request made by the fool wearing the same clothes she wore all day yesterday and also to bed.

Now they at least wait to gauge what mood I’m in before they ask to have the rugby team over for tea or if we can buy a llama.

I’m just glad I have something that helps me chill at those times when I feel like the endless day has finely reached it un-climatic close. Went to work, restocked shelves, ran the registers, sang “God Save the King” and "I'm 'enry the Eighth, I am" over the loudspeaker.

So I get home and there is a llama in the chicken coop eating a purse. (I hope it was a purse, or at least a cat). My son's weight-lifting buddies are in the living room with the furniture pushed up against the walls playing football. He quickly explains to me that “We are only playing touch, not tackle!” This is supposed to make it OK. While we are in the third quarter, my daughter Lizzie tells me about the llama named Dolly she saved from sudden death. I step over some boys and cross to the CD player to put on some Manhattan Transfer. I need jazz.

The King says “talk to the hand”.

Missing The Mechanism

My wife tells me that I can get away with saying the stuff for which most people get a good yelling. She claims that most people have, in their brain, a natural mechanism that helps differentiate between the appropriate and the inappropriate - nerves go left = say it, nerves go right = don’t say it.

Apparently I am missing the mechanism.

Now, I didn’t spend the time she did in college actually attending class. I was an actor. So I will have to defer to her on this one.

To the point: Brunaldo is standing at the gun counter. I call him Brunaldo out of affection, and by affection, I mean fear. The first thing I notice as I return from gathering carts is his bald head with a tattoo of what looked like a grilled steak placed on than back of his head and a little to the left. It was either a hunk of beef or the state on Kentucky. I giggled to myself, but just to myself quietly. So far so good, right? I then notice that he has an eye patch. I am intrigued, and so I start off a conversation that I have no business being in by saying something like “So, I guess you are the epitome of ‘Don’t do that or you’ll put an eye out‘, aren’t ‘cha?”

He glared at me with his one eye. I thought about running for the door or jumping into one of the larger gun safes. It was then that I read his camo muscle tee shirt that said “I eat Meat. Everything is Meat” Did I mention that he was at the gun counter?

My follow up question I will swear to a jury of anyone’s peers was in self defense. You see, the science to making it look like you meant to put your foot in it goes like this; Act like a well-meaning idiot with a mental handicap. Had I acted according to my knowledge, I would have saved the situation from ugliness and could have finished the day at work without being suspended for stupidity. Where I should have drooled and swayed I instead asked. “So, what’d you do?” He spits something out of his mouth, squishes it with his steal toed military boots and mutters something about agent orange and the war and I will skip to the part where he does not eat me. Or use me for target practice.

This particular story does not end up as nicely as the story about how I told a crippled man he was slower than my kids doing chores. (I didn’t see his cane until afterwards - I swear again.) At least that story has me with a new friend and a determination to not let my son make the same mistakes while playing football as ol' wood leg did - much more interesting that stocking canoes or running from mad men at the gun counter.

Most times, by stating the obvious, I make a friend. My thinking is that people want to share stories and friendships, and the older I get the more friends I want. I am hoping for my funeral to be packed with funny “Do you remember when Davison…” stories that make people laugh.

I would just be thrilled to get to the point in my life where my only options aren’t to either make a friend - or die.

I Think I Just Saw Jessica Fletcher

My darling wife has informed me that she is no longer enamored of our current location and wants to move. By us she means me. She gets to pick the house, I get to do the moving. She said she found “the perfect plot” which sounds to me like something out of “Murder She Wrote“.

To humor her, I drove out to “Perfection” on my lunch break from my new job - which I told her I wouldn’t do because she thinks that I will look with my Old Man Eyes - which means that I will claim I don’t like it even if I really do. So, I went in search of the “Murder She Wrote” plot, which, as it turns out, was right in the middle of an area that was zoned for industrial use only. She later stated that with the way I keep the yard, no one would be the wiser.

Apparently my wife doesn’t want to move, she just wants to guilt me into to doing something with the lawn, or the not-lawn. I don’t have a front lawn. I have a homey country garden. She wants a lawn. Lawns are boring. She thinks lawns are welcoming vibrant, healthy playgrounds of love and happy growing harmonious green peace and serenity.

I think she is a loon. And I don’t think much of her option on grass either. I think there is nothing wrong with a few perennials or twelve. Dandelions in mass can be lovely and unexpected. And hard to kill. And a perfect companion to an old bust of BenHer that I found at the crazy ladies yard sale. The area around the dryer vent is perfect for my never blooming hydrangeas, and the dryer lint itself has taken on a beauty of its own. An owl with a swivel head can be charming on an old dead tree with ivy growing over it - sort of down-home-trailer-park meets Martha on a Sunday morning in May. All connected with a gravel path that draws your eye away from the yellow caution tape on the north side where they found the body.

I planted mint there. Mint will grow anywhere.

I just don’t have much luck with planting flowers from seed, and potted perennials are expensive. I tried buying a grab bag of beautiful green perennials last fall and I dutifully planted and watered them as I was told. This spring they turned into the kind of thorny, drooling man eating horticulture I imagine are protecting the gates to the Garden of Eden from thieves and republicans.

Seeds look incredibly easy, but no. I cant get it right. For light, since I start them out in the basement so my wife doesn’t see them and throw them away, I purchased a big florescent monster that is bright enough that it came with it’s own tube of sunscreen. I have to sort out my whites and coloreds with sunglasses.

I start planting in November because I am already sick of winter by then. I tried to lightly mist the area around the plants with water, but I don’t do anything with moderation-says my therapist who is also my wife’s aerobics instructor. Mold started growing on the ceiling and the big florescent light shorted out because of the humidity. The only things I salvaged were the mushrooms on the wall, the water bottle and three tons of laundry that have been there since the election. The dryer vent was unscathed, thank heaven, because the lint in the yard gives it such a mature, aged feel.

That industrial use only plot is looking better and better.

Didn’t everybody in “Murder She Wrote” die in the end?

DietCokeLand

Hello. My name is Davison and I am a coke addict. My preferred beverage is actually part Diet Coke and part Mountain Dew Code Red. Sometimes if I don’t mix it up it looks like that three tiered Jell-O from the seventies. People just curious or trying to be nice ask me what the mixture is and I pull the 64 oz closer, squint my eyes and ask, “Why do you want to know”?

My wife thinks I am self medicating and that it stabilizes my moods - my own personal carbonated Prozac, as it were. I say to that, “You have got to be fargin‘ kidding me? My moods are fine! I cant help it if everybody else drives me nuts. Can’t they get a life? Why are they all looking at what I drink anyway? They are all out to get me! You all are just jealous!

Okay. I’m fine now. I just talked to my doctor. He said he found some blood in my Diet Coke stream. When I disappear for twenty minutes and come back in a better mood, my daughter says I’ve visited Diet Coke Land. And it’s true. Life seems to more palatable after a sip or two, … or 64. I once tried a caffeine-free diet coke and about slipped off into a coma. They had to hook up the emergency mini fridge and a catheter.

One year my kids surprised me with a diet coke Christmas tree, proclaiming nervously “Now we can all have a merry Christmas!”

Yeah, I got it.

My wife and I looked at each other from over the top of a lovely poinsettia arrangement in a big-swig refill cup. That year I didn’t try to quit as a new years resolution. Quitting is worse. No more quitting for me. I’m going to have to figure out the whole moderation thing, which apparently is not just for weenies anymore.

My problem (other than the whole scary mood, kids on eggshells, life draining through tired kidneys thing) is that when I try to go off diet-coke, I get a headache and have muscle pain, nausea and I puke a lot and listen to the Carpenters "Rainy Days and Mondays" over and over. The American Psychiatric Association (Who is on my wife’s speed-dial) is trying to classify caffeine withdrawal as a mental disorder - in which case I an truly disabled.

Also, my church frowns on diet-coke. Well, not diet coke, but caffeine generally. Not really frown either, but look crinkly and sideways at.

Sometimes I am called on to teach a class and I have a hard time disguising my drink as a plant or a sculpture. Once I used it as a vase and put flowers in it - with a straw. Most times, however, I just end up taking the biggest swig I can just before I walk in and then I swallow a little bit at a time during the opening song.

So, my options are to go cold turkey and live in the basement for three weeks and use all my root canal meds for the headache, and live happily ever after holding my head high at church and make my children live with the insanity that is me, or lose my kidneys and up the Prozac (which I buy currently in bulk).

I need to think. Where’s my drink?

Baptism by Check or Credit Card

I once swore that I would never again work for someone who asked me to either...

A. Wear a name tag,
B. Wear a vest, company hat, or hair net
D. Gather carts from the parking lot.

You guessed it, my current job requires me to do all three - and thankfully it's a vest and not a hair net. Its not that I want to denigrate these jobs. Working to pay ones bills is honorable in any form. It’s just that I thought I’d put that type of job behind me - that I’d paid my dues as it were. These were the jobs that kept me alive during college so I could get better jobs. Well, apparently they weren’t.

My previous job due to some bad luck on both our accounts let me go. I was without work for several weeks. But as I kept saying to my wife, a job is a job. Actually, she said that to me. She thinks I’m a snob. In my defense, I am from Idaho. That’s it. That’s all I’m saying.

I am currently working in an entry level job that I hope will help pay bills. Though I am spared from “Would you like fries with that?”, the current equivalent is “May I help you out to your car with that bag of cured steer manure?”

I am frequently asked questions, the answer to which I often make up off the cuff, and more often than not, I am right. My bosses become visibly and verbally annoyed when they spend the bulk of their day answering my questions as I try to answer those of the customer. Entry level folk like I am are not taught the difference between straight run and sexed chickens, but we learn in a hurry. Or between pre-emergent and wide leaf killer. Apparently Briggs and Stratton does not make the entire tiller, and carriage bolts are sold by the pound not by the number of grooves.
Having the answers to these questions helps me stayed employed.

Looking for a little moral support after a tough day and feeling more than a little sorry for myself, I asked my wife if she would -when shopping - expect every Joe Blow at any ol’ store to be able to have a correct answer to all her home and lawn care questions, and she said “Yes, Dear” from over the paper.

Traitor. So now I spend extra time reading up on the difference between lawn and orchard grass, and plumbing jargon, sump pump slang and non-tacky tack talk. I still can’t advise you on what to do to a lame horse other than read it a story and drink a diet-coke. You, I mean - not the horse. Well, maybe the horse. But I can take steer manure to your car and smile to myself, ’cause you car is messier than mine.

Now I am learning to cashier, and one of the girls also at the registers is a friend of my daughters and went to school with her. How lovely. It just makes me want to run and hide in a storage room. She tells me what to do and how to ring someone up properly. I smile, say thank you and grit my teeth. Maybe what I am really learning is harder for me to take that instruction from a teenager. When it gets slow I can gather carts from the parking lot and pick up trash or put prices on candy.

My wife has been working steady since she was through with school, and has a decent job. I was told years ago by a man I trusted that if I focus on my family I would never lack for food or shelter. I think of that as I cash my just over minimum wage check and look at my son playing x-box and wonder how much longer I can pay for the power. I try not to look at him for too long or he’ll start to pick his nose.

In the morning, and by morning I mean noon because I have the closing shift, I put my red vest & name tag on, grab my work radio. I pray for the recession to be over so I can make a living writing, and make my wife a stay-at-home mom for which she would kiss me over and over.

And I wouldn't write about ¾ inch threaded pvc elbows or welded wire. I'd write about something I was intimately acquainted with. That I'm not as in-charge as I thought I was. And that I'm no better than anybody else.

Can I put that in a bag for you?

Death by Laundry

They will think I am dead. I’m just going to kneel over and collapse on these seven bins of clothing and loose consciousness.

My body will not be found for months, or until someone needs to find a pink sweeter with white boas attached the the neck and long sleeves that I am currently laying on, or something else they have to have yesterday, which will take forever, because all my kids wear the same thing day after day.

I have been down here not really expecting any help because the laundry room is the only place I can nap with assured and complete privacy. So there I will lay with Removes-It stuck to my face getting the best sleep of my life.

“Then why?” you ask, “is he complaining about laundry.”

The thing is. in my family one does not actually have to don said garment for it to be surreptitiously discarded onto the stairs which is done because downstairs is the general direction of the laundry room. Apparently, there is no other use for the bottom of the stairs and hallway. It ends up in piles that look like African termite nests. No one braves the basement but me. My wife hates basements. She hates basements and spiders and damp. And dark and laundry and stairs and weeding and the backyard, unless it’s clean and chicken free, and chickens, and walking on the chalk line when playing softball and chickens and having to fold clothes that have gone through the laundry without seeing skin of any sort in between washing. And chickens.

My youngest son, and out of respect for him I will call him T, which is what we call him as do all his friends (so hopefully someone will read this, recognize him, and beat him until he comes to his senses) - is a pig. A one-shirt-wearing pig. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love his choice of shirt. His football jersey is spot-on for many an occasion. He looks quiet dashing running after the bus because he couldn’t find this one shirt in time to be on time. He looks charming during his choir concert in that lovely number ten. Playing basketball or computer games, or computer games, or even a computer game or two is complemented by the white and blue of his team uniform. He even tried it for church once. Once. Yet, out of his room roles a steady stream of clothing, some of which I do not even recognize as his. There are things he hasn’t worn since he came out of the suitcase the doctor prescribed we keep him in for jaundice at his birth. There’s an outfit from his cub scout cowboy cookout from four years ago. I have folded it and put it away twice this week.

I tell the kids to use a towel and hang it up for the next day. I do this because it may cut down on laundry, and we can save on water and electricity - It’s the green thing to do! They don’t buy it. The only way I’m going to get them to be green is to not acknowledge that T hasn’t bathed since school has been out. At that point he starts to glow in the dark.

There is a formula that I use, mainly to process how much laundry soap we will need, or how much space I need for the laundry room addition I dream of. It’s something like age plus puberty plus deodorant, minus how many showers should be taken, divided by square foot of current basement space squared by how many washcloths were thrown away because I used them to clean the floor.

Now, in all fairness, I do have a “thing” with towels. I don’t like using the same one twice, or when its damp, or when I have a pulse or on days that end with “ay“. I try to not make it obvious. I pile them in our room until my wife doesn’t have a place to sleep, she gets on me, I moan under my breath about how unfair it is, and throw them down the stairs.

After all, no one comes down here but me. And I am ready fro my nap.