Tales from the Girls' Bathroom

The other day, while visiting the luxurious girls' bathroom at school (which is equipped with high-sensitivity automatic hand dryers that freak me out by turning on every time I walk by them), my 3rd-grade daughter had this encounter. 

A tiny little kindergarten student approached my daughter and said, "Can you help me wash my hands?"  So, my sweet daughter hoisted up the little girl so she could wash her hands. 

Once her hands were washed and dried, she turned to my daughter and asked, "Can I have a quarter?"  I'm not sure why my daughter had a quarter in her pocket, but she is very generous, so she gave it to little Miss K, who proceeded to ask my daughter if she would help her get something from the mysterious machine in the bathroom. 

My daughter wasn't quite sure what was in the machine either, so the girls put the coin in the slot and turned the handle.  Little Miss K turned out to be a good reader, because when she pulled the box out of the machine, she said, "What the heck is this?  It's a napkin."  The little girl then tried to shove the box back into the machine, probably wondering why on earth there were napkins in the bathroom.  She asked my daughter if she had another quarter so she could try the other slot, but my daughter decided it was time to get back to class.

When my daughter told me this story, we were driving home from school, and could barely see the road through my tears of laughter.  I thought I may just need a similar product for bladder control.

I have other fond memories of children discovering the joys of femine products.  When another of my daughters was two, she went through a stage where she would climb out of bed after we said goodnight, and she would "explore" the upstairs.  One night, Al and I heard some rustling around in the upstairs bathroom.  I went up to investigate, told the quizzical two-year-old to go back to bed, and then subdued my immense laughter while I called for my husband to come upstairs.

Lying on the toilet were about 10 of those adhesive strip covers used for feminine napkins, in nice neat little lines.  When Al joined me in the bathroom, I asked him, "What do you think she did with the pads?"  I envisioned having to scoop soggy, saturated napkins out of the toilet. 

But I looked around the bathroom and slowly realized that my creative little daughter had "redecorated" the bathroom.  There was a pad wrapped neatly around each of the many handles of our cabinets, and an artistic array of pads arranged on the wall under the towel bar.  I could just imagine her fascination as she embellished the bathroom::  "Mom never told me we have STICKERS in the bathroom!"

By the time I finished surveying the bathroom, I was laughing so hard that I couldn't even catch my breath.  I tapped Al's shoulder - he was still staring at the toilet - and pointed to the dainty decorations placed around our bathroom.  We both burst into further rounds of gasping laughter.  Meanwhile the two-year-old was yelling from her room, "What's so funny???"

I wholeheartedly oppose the TV commercials showing femine products - it's always so embarrassing when in mixed company. (Besides that, we all know that women never wear white during that time, no matter how good your protection is.)  Everyone either stares at the TV in discomfort, starts picking bellybutton lint, or tells a ridiculous joke to try to draw attention away from the disturbing content coming from the TV.


But in this context, feminine products make for wonderful storytelling and maniacal laughter.

Batteries and Catnip

 I posted this yesterday, but it got lost in my birthday wishes (THANK YOU!)  So, here it is again.

 (Photo credit: not mine!  I found this Icanhascheezburger.com)

I got a wonderful birthday surprise yesterday morning:  I convinced my son to put his tongue on the end of a 9-volt battery.  Yes!  I never thought he would try it!  That's why I didn't tell him what would happen.  He thought it was funny, though, so no harm done.

Next, little Power Puss decided he would try to convince his sisters to do it.  "No way", I thought.  "There is no way that the girls will try it - they're too. . . .girlish".   However, he succeeded in convincing the 9-year-old first, then the 12-year-old.  It took the 11-year-old a little more time to work up the courage, but she finally did it.  We all had a good laugh at everyone's reactions, and especially the fact that they kept wanting to do it again and again.  It's kind of like touching the electric fence back on the farm.  You can't do it just once.  They started to get creative, sprinkling water on other areas of skin to see if they could get a zap, which they didn't.  Then someone suggested, "Try it on your uvula!", at which point I confiscated the battery.

Also of note is the fact that the kids made us breakfast in bed - pancakes, eggs, toast, orange juice and coffee (I ground the coffee the night before and left instructions on how to make it - you can't leave these things to chance.)  Ev brought me a sweet hand-painted picture of him and myself.  I wish I was that skinny in real life.  But I'm glad I don't have green skin.

But enough of the feel-good birthday bits:  Back to batteries.  I told the kids that their next experiment should be to try their tongue on one of those huge 4.5-volt square batteries.  However, does 4.5-volt mean it's less powerful than a puny 9-volt?  How is that possible?  Anyway, I do not concern myself with such things.  I just think it would be fun to watch.

Oooh, how about a car battery?  My husband, for some suspicious reason, contributed a very quick NO to that idea.  I guess it's because kids don't have long enough tongues to reach across both connections.  Ohh, but cows do.  Have you ever seen how long a cow's tongue is?  Get a cow's tongue across a car battery and you could have instant steak.

Then we came to the idea of cats.  Cats have very long tongues, and although they're not as stupid as cows, we could possibly get them to lick a battery.  "Get some catnip", I yelled.  As the kids raced off to find the cat treats, I thought better of it and decided that, no, we should not actually try to electrocute the cats.  Not sure what the outcome would be.

I assume that now everyone can relate to what Al has to deal with every single day when he straps on his electro-stim equipment and sends not-so-tiny electrical currents through several muscle groups to get his paralyzed limbs moving.  According to the words he's used - zap, fry, tingle, sizzle, sear, fricassee - it's not the most pleasant process.  And now we can all have some solidarity with him, at least for the brief moments that we see fit to stick 9-volt batteries on our tongues (which, by the way, I didn't try because 1. it IS my birthday, and 2. I've given birth to 4 children).

But I just don't think the cats would understand.

Fuddy Duddy

I guess I'm becoming an old fuddy-duddy. Last night, my mom, my kids and I went to Silver Bells in the City, Lansing's annual Christmas tree lighting celebration. It was a great deal of fun with an electric light parade that lasted an hour, the main event - the tree lighting - and a spectacular fireworks display over the dome of the capitol building. There were also horse-drawn wagon rides, hot chocolate and roasted chestnuts on every corner, and musical performances in many downtown buildings.

And Cody Simpson.

For the past few years, Lansing has hosted up-and-coming pipsqueaks to perform on the capitol steps. Last year, it was Josh Golden. I looked him up on google, and he's pretty cute, but he's only 16. He looks way more grown up than a 16-year-old should. I haven't heard any more about him since then, but my girls were pretty psyched to be right next to the capitol steps so they could see him from the side. He came out and started singing, dancing and lunging toward the crowd, at which point I saw his boxers.

 Girls behind me were yelling, "I love you Josh!", and "I want to marry you, Josh".

After many years of yelling practice, I was able to shout above everyone, "Pull your pants up, Josh!"

Back to Cody Simpson. I looked him up online to see who he was - at least I'd heard of him before. He is a little kid, people. He probably still plays with legos and wears underoos. Doesn't he look like the kid next door who comes over to ask if your 7-year-old can come out and play?



And, you can disagree with me if you want to, but in this picture, he looks like a little kid who is dressing up in his Dad's Ray-Bans for a theme day at school.



Cody Simpson is indeed a good singer, but even the songs he sings are inappropriately "old" for a 14-year-old. I was just shocked at this little kid, traveling the globe, having girls scream at him for his awesome voice and his pre-pubescent body (which by the way was wearing purple jeggings that still hung loose on him). I thought about him from the perspective of his mother - how would I feel if that were my kid??? Proud, I'm sure, but a little weirded out, too, at the way little girls were acting about my little boy.

Yeah, this has fuddy-duddy written all over it.