Getting some forced writing time here. Picking up toys will wake the child and the bath has been forbidden until the washer and dish cycle finish. The dish cycle, mind you, has been running for over three hours. We’re in dire need of a new septic system, and we’ve been waiting since before Thanksgiving for the job to get done.
It can’t come soon enough. A mom’s life is already tough without having to live with a bath Nazi. Every time I run a tub for our little one who gets into so much stuff all day long the bath Nazi comes in warning me not to fill it too much. It wouldn’t irk me so much if he didn’t take twenty minute showers. But he does. He takes long, luxurious showers while he expects the rest of us, who don’t “work in the public”, to go without. Today he actually said to me, “You’re not actually doing anything to get dirty.” He’s obviously unaware of the maple syrup our son transferred to my hair and shoulders when I took him out of his booster seat, or the grit that I accrue from cooking and cleaning and diapering, not to mention the cat pee on the floor that he never seems to notice, or the fact that there has been a lice situation at the local play center.
Sometimes it astounds me how much he doesn’t get, then I remind myself that men have selective knowledge the same way they have selective smell [cat piss and dirty diapers never come to his attention] and selective hearing [if I ever need to do something that involves him watching the boy, I somehow never said anything to him about it] oh and selective reasoning, as in, my time with our child is a day at the beach until I need back up, and then it’s, “like I need a fourth job.”
I know the denial is just a part of how he copes, though. It’s hard to acknowledge that your lady could use some degrunging when you’re worried your pipes are going to burst.
Still, please, will somebody back me up here and debunk his myth that a few inches of bath water for a small child uses more than a twenty minute shower? Seriously. His showers produce steam that evaporates into a lake on the bathroom floor. Hey, maybe I could recycle that water to wash the nits out of my hair. Now we’re thinking on our toes. [Just kidding. I don’t actually have any nits. At least, I don’t think so. But how can I be sure when I can’t get the man to even look at my scalp, or at the very least, let me run some water to wash my hair.]
So, for Christmas, all I want are bath salts, and a nice bottle of wine with the perfect glass to perch on the side of the tub while I linger to my heart’s contents in aromatic suds.
But I’m a little worried. Because while Santa Clause’s existence is ambiguous at best, there can be no refuting the existence of Scrooge. Scrooge comes in many costumes, but right now he is embodied by the man with the backhoe, the man with the backhoe who parked his big rumbling machine on our lot at the beginning of the week just to taunt and torment us. The man with the backhoe who literally holds us on the edge of our seat should we need, heaven forefend, to use the can. That backhoe man, aka, Scrooge, better get here quick, or our merry Ho-ho’s will soon be cries of Oh No.
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