Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The Naked Truth

In the blog entry before last I exposed the female streakers that live in my house. I portrayed myself as the last bastion of decorum and propriety; alone among all the mammals living under our roof in my decency and respectability. I was the defender of all that is prudish and puritan in America; and a sincere reporter of our sartorial situation. My wife actually thought me a tad too high and mighty, and a bit hypocritical. She threatened to bring me down a notch by revealing some heretofore secret observations of her own in her blog. So, I decided to expose myself about self exposure.

Prior to taking on the role of stay at home dad, I was pretty disorganized. Some of that disorganization has survived Dipity. One relic of the days before multitasking is my inability to remember to bring my clothes down to the bathroom where I shower. I should point out that in what has become a trend, I am living with less than ideal shower conditions and only complaining moderately about that particular hardship. In Wisconsin there was one shower, with a ceiling that was a whopping five feet or so away from the floor. Now we have one bathroom I can stand up in, which is the guest bedroom on the first floor. The bathroom closest to our bedroom has a ceiling that is plenty high enough and a shower nozzle that is perfect for cleaning the lint out of my belly button. So, I keep all my bathroom stuff upstairs near the bedroom, and shower downstairs. This means that I have to remember to bring my clothes down with me. Everything else, excepting the towel, I leave upstairs and deal with up there. What this means in practical terms is that every morning after my shower I find myself in the bathroom without clean clothing. That means I can put the old stuff back on and take it off again when I get upstairs, which means either I have to remember to bring it down in the first place even though no one is out in the public areas when I head down to the bathroom so I don't need to be clothed when I head down to the shower or I have to wear my towel upstairs which guarantees that the next morning I will step out of the shower to a bathroom that does not contain my towel. What I normally do is hold my clothing over my special area and sprint through the living room and dining room on my way to the stairs. By the time I finish pretending that I can be productive before breakfast and take a shower, breakfast is well underway in the dining room. As I run past my wife spooning oatmeal into my daughter's mouth I wave. Sometimes I run rather close and give her a kiss. Occasionally I give my butt a shake as I hit the stairs. It's easier to do that then to switch my bundle of clothing to my ass and then back to my front when I round the corner. I'm not sure how long I should continue to do this, or whether I should be doing it at all. I probably should stop before the point at which long term memory kicks in. My earliest memory is from a trip my parents took me on when I was nearly four. Who knows if my dad ran around the house naked, but if he did he stopped before 1977. I have until 2010 to become more normal. I might need a lot of good luck. My streaking isn't part of some master plan, so I'm not sure how easy it will be to alter. And for the record, I refuse to wear a bathrobe unless I get to smoke a pipe and relax mid morning by the pool with a few bunnies. Maybe I'll start wearing my bed clothes upstairs. Maybe I'll start remembering to bring down the day's outfit. Whatever happens, I have cleared my conscience and can go back to reporting on the hi jinks of the house's other mammals.

1 comment:

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