The Fancy Shampoo Fairy

“This could be an award-winning advertising campaign.”

I must still be dreaming. Either that, or The Fancy Shampoo Fairy paid our shower a visit during the night. Then again, I stopped believing in him (hey, why can’t The Fancy Shampoo Fairy be a guy?) moons ago. But…wait…what’s this? Matching fancy conditioner? Maybe he does really exist! See, ever since Wife and I got serious about monthly budget tracking, we’ve been unable to justify splurging on high-end shampoo and conditioner when the generic crap works just as well. For example, the past several weeks I have been washing my glorious golden globe with Minnie Mouse 3 in 1 Shampoo Conditioner and Body Wash. Sure, my hair smells like an expired bubblegum air freshener and feels like I’m holding hands with a scarecrow, but our bottom line has never looked more handsome. Speaking of which, is anyone working on a 10+ in 1 product that will tackle multiple grooming and home maintenance tasks at once? You could brush your teeth, regrout the tub, brush your cats’ teeth, wash your car, spice up a sandwich, seal your garage, and moisturize your elbows all from the same tube! They do it with razor blades–why can’t they do it with shampoo? Ah, look at me. Here I am daydreaming in the shower and I haven’t even washed my hair yet. Guess I’ll try the fancy stuff! [Wife hears cap POP open from the basement, YELLS up the stairs] Oh. I see now. Wife’s friend is visiting this weekend.

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The Absence of Curtains

On display.

I feel exposed. Not because most of you have figured out by now that I am a fraud posing as an online literary provocateur of the highest order (I got over that a long time ago), but because our new house still does not have window treatments, and, in short, Wife and I feel like we’re living in a giant terrarium. “So get window treatments,” you snort, as you pet your sphynx with a bejeweled claw that has been malformed by decades of anger and resentment and scooping ice cream that you haven’t let sit at room temperature for the requisite grace period and so the ice cream is so stiff it’s like trying to dig through cement with a teaspoon on New Year’s Day in Montreal. Though you make a valid point, made ever the more convincing by the fact that you own a rare breed of hairless cat (I’m not going to act like I’m not impressed), you have to understand the context of the situation. Wife and I currently have a house to-do list that spans five football fields. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say getting window treatments is somewhere between unpacking the rest of our stuff, painting the walls, and rebuilding the house so I can fit a urinal in the master bathroom. In the meantime, I can’t step out of the shower without feeling like I’m in some performance art installation at the Guggenheim called “Man Stepping Out of Shower in Glass Box.” Maybe we should just paint the windows black?

Kafka on the Shower

Beetle Bailey.

I need a good rinse. Unfortunately, I’m in the shower, which means my body will be neglected the thorough washing it needs. For some reason, the warm running water sends me into a catatonic state, rendering me utterly useless for a good ten minutes. Oh – I’m not suggesting that I waste water. I’ll slap some soap under my arms and squeeze out a few drops of the dreaded three in one generic shampoo (Wife’s sworn enemy) in the final minute. But until then, I am temporarily transformed into a sleeping Japanese water beetle. It’s an aquatic Metamorphosis that simply cannot be explained by science. It can, however, be explained by the fact that I ate half a pint of pumpkin ice cream in bed last night, and had so much sugar in my system that I couldn’t get to sleep until about 1:30 AM. Now it is 7:00 AM, and I am in the shower, completely exhausted. What I need is one of those Japanese showers that does everything for you: scrubbing, rinsing, drying – and then at the very end a tiny robot opens the door for you, while a slightly larger robot wraps you in a towel, and then a human-sized robot goes about your day so you can go back to sleep. That exists, right? Man, what I would give for one of them fancy workin’ robots. I could sleep til noon, take four hour showers, and then use the money the robot made to buy carbon offsets to make up for excessive water use. That would be so ama-GAAAAAAAAAAH!

Sorry. The hot water ran out. And yes, I am typing this in the shower.

A Tale of Two Toilets

Marital bliss.

Forget everything you’ve ever heard about “communication,” or “respect,” or “loving each other.”  When it comes to marriage, the secret to success is [drumroll] separate toilets. Trust me, I know: I’ve been married for three months. Three magical months of matrimony with my lovely wife, who, for purposes of anonymity, shall be heretofore referred to as “Wife.” Anyway, Wife and I have worked out a fantastic system of bathroom-ing that has simultaneously maximized efficiency and streamlined t.p. distribution. And that system is this: GET THE [expletive deleted] OUT OF MY BATHROOM! You see, in this mutually beneficial system, Wife gets to take relaxing bubble baths and store beauty products in a massive cabinet, a.k.a. “The Hurt Locker,” while I get to take showers in a scum-covered linolium stall with zero ventilation and an overhead fan coil heater that could bake chocolate-chip muffins in about fifteen minutes. Then there’s the issue of toilet usage. Let’s see, how do I put this delicately? If Wife and I were professional bull riders, and our respective toilets were bulls, I would get way, way, way, way, way more endorsement deals. This is partially due to the fact that I’m a dude, and science tells us that dudes (D) spend more time (x) per toilet trip (y) than chicks (C) [graph not pictured], but mostly that I recently figured out how to turn my phone into a six-inch wall-mounted HD television by resting it on two light switches in the “ON” position. Sure, my legs go numb, but I want to keep pretending I’m a wealthy rapper who watches Sportscenter on the john!