… on freakin’ chewy centers

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Nope. Not a sculpture.

In Maine, I have one of those cute little wooden signs.

You know the ones. They’re wood and sort of box-y, and also quote-y.  And I mean quote-y. They have profound quotes on them like, “Life isn’t about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself” or “Live the life you’ve imagined”.  And then they also have the ones that I personally purchased with quotes like, “Procrastinate now!” and “Please neuter your pets and weird friends and relatives”.

And, yes, if I could figure out how to get the extra ‘H’ in there, it would absolutely say “Please neuter your pets and wHierd friends and relatives”.

But those are not the box-y quote-y signs I wanted to tell you about.

I wanted to tell you about the little one I have up in Maine, in the teeny tiny downstairs bathroom.

I hung it right near the light switch so people have to see it.  And I know they have to see it because the teeny tiny downstairs bathroom in Maine has no windows. So you either use the light switch – thus seeing my cute little sign – or you pee all over the place in the pitch black because you can’t see – and I kill you.

Your choice.

Anyway, that sign? It says “Changing the toilet paper will not cause brain damage”.

Which, translated means “Change the flucking toilet paper when you use the last of it. Please.”

The ‘please’ is because I want my guests to believe I am polite to my family. Because my family is who the sign is for.

And when I got the sign, all the family chuckled and laughed and thought it was a very cute little sign. But it didn’t work.

Nothing worked.

I have even considered going all subliminal messaging on their arses.

Like, I could be waiting outside the bathroom when they come out, with a rather large chef’s knife in one hand and the knife sharpener in the other and say things like, “Hi Honey! How are you feeling today? Me? Oh – ha, ha – I’m feeling slightly stabby with a chance of showers later. Hey, does the toilet paper need changing?”

But then I thought, nah. Because it sounded a little passive aggressive and I hate that.

Something big changed, though, when Marshal Dillon Dingle was a little itty bitty puppy (vs. the puppy his is now, and will always be in his own mind).  People started changing the toilet paper!

Okay. It actually started out with Puppy-Marshal Dillon Dingle changing the toilet paper … most of the time before the toilet paper was actually gone from the roll.

And he changed it because he loved the little cardboard rolls. So we began to call those rolls, ‘The chewy centers”.

Ya. As in, “How many bites of toilet paper does it take to get to the chewy center of a toilet paper roll? Let’s find out … ah one, ah two, ah three…..

Ah three.”

(But most of the time it was more than ah three).

And Puppy-Marshal Dillon Dingle loved and played and slobbered over and destroyed so many chewy centers that our friend Nik Jablonski would bring over his family’s left over chewy centers each week.

Lots of chewy centers equaled happy puppy who didn’t eat my furniture.

Excellent.

But now Marshal Dillon Dingle is not a puppy (except in his own mind) and he no longer eats the toilet paper to get to the chewy centers.  And the great news (GREAT!) is that the Nearly Perfect Husband and Self-Proclaimed Perfect Boy Gabe still keep the little fur ball in mind every time they use the last of the toilet paper.

And they carefully remove the roll from the toilet paper hang-y thing on the wall and sometimes they even put a brand new roll of toilet paper back on the hang-y thing.

know!

And then?

Well then they take the chewy center directly to the little bathroom trash bin and place it gently inside before washing their hands, wiping down the sink and rejoining civilization.

Nah. I’m just kidding.

I pushed it too far with the wiping down the sink thing, didn’t I?

No. What really happens is they put the freakin’ chewy centers on the closest horizontal surface they can find!

Reminder:

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I did not create that for you!

And sometimes, when I get all sorts of defiant and will not take the chewy centers to their semi-final resting places in the little trash bin 8 feet away?

Sometimes there are so many chewy centers piled up on the window shelf that they fall off onto the floor. And when they do?

The boys will actually pick them up and take the time to balance them all over each other, on the window sill, rather than haul them all the way across the bathroom to the little trash bin.

I dunno.

My head hurts.

Because clearly my little wooden sign in Maine is wrong.

In my house?

Changing the toilet paper does cause brain damage.

Whose brain?

Mine.

Thanks for readin’

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAs always, you can come on over to Just Ponderin’s Facebook page to comment or just hang out.