On The Outs

On The Outs

You'll excuse me if I'm a bit pissy today. No pun intended. I go into the bathroom this morning; half asleep. I sit, do my business, and THEN find there's no damn toilet paper. Why? Why can't the last person put a new roll on? WHY? I don't care if it's put on the roller "over" or "under"...just put it on for Chrissake! So fine. Okay. I can either sit there and drip dry or be resourceful. I have things to do. So I stretch my leg out toward the hamper and grab a towel with my toes, dragging it back toward me, bitching under my breath that I could really use some of that TP from the tenting of my house the other day, and I use the towel to wipe. Don't worry, I'm doing laundry today and I'll use extra hot water and bleach. Whatever. Dream on.

Now, let me just say this. I buy toilet paper in bulk. BIG packages of rolls and rolls of toilet paper at Costco. I keep a special cabinet out in the garage FULL of paper towels and toilet paper. It isn't THAT difficult to go out to the damn garage and get toilet paper. That is unless you're living in MY house. If you're one of my kids, and you run out of toilet paper in the hall bathroom, you simply go into Mom and Dad's bathroom and you steal all of theirs. Forget the fact that the garage is just a few extra feet away from Mom and Dad's bathroom. It's a few feet extra too much to go. Why bother to go to the garage when you can just leave your parents stranded?

Next, I go into the kitchen to make coffee. Still a bit sleepy, with an added edge of frustration and grumbling about toilet paper. I open the freezer to get the coffee, then go to the cabinet to get a filter. No friggin filters. Dammit. Sumbitch. I have a vague recollection of Caris making a pot of coffee yesterday afternoon. Did she mention that she used the last coffee filter? No. Why should she do that? After all, food and products in the home mystically appear on a mere whim of thought. We have a magical refrigerator and pantry. You simply stand in front of it like Picard in front of a Replicator and state what you want, and "POOF", it is made so. But for me? No, not for me. I have to MacGyver it because I'm not going another minute without coffee. So, I get to work fashioning a coffee filter out of paper napkins folded "just so" and form them to my coffee maker's filter basket. Then I watch carefully to make sure it works, resting my tired head on my folded arm on the kitchen counter top, mumbling about toilet paper AND coffee filters.

I may not have all my faculties about me at this particular moment, but damn if I'm not the most resourceful grump in the world. Remind me to restock the Replicator.