Toilet Troubles...

I’ve decided that Trevor and I need separate bathrooms. Other than the fact that we obviously have different quality control standards when it comes to personal hygiene , there is that age old problem surrounding the toilet seat.

The way I look at it: women need the toilet seat down 100% of the time, and men 50%. Therefore, the seat should stay down. Granted, Trevor has lived either by himself or with other men (brother, frat brethren and a hodgepodge of male roommates), so it isn’t in his nature to actually *remember* to put the seat back down. I’ve been working on this over the last year, though, and there has been slow progress.

But – for whatever reason – Trevor has forgotten to put the seat back down at night at least twice in the last week. Consequently, when I have gotten up to pee at three or four in the morning, I have fallen in. And there is nothing quite as unpleasant as having your bum hit toilet water when it is dark and you are barely conscious. Talk about a rude awakening! And then you have to do a brief sponge bath of the posterior, because toilet water – no matter how recently the toilet was cleaned – is just plain gross. There is no way you are getting back into bed without disinfecting the area first.

Then the anger sets in because, really?! Is it so much to ask that an effort is made to put the flipping seat down at night? And then you get back in to bed and kick your husband, because he was the one who left it up in the first place and caused your freshly showered a$$ to come in contact with toilet water at four in the morning. You also grumble and swear at him, and let him know how angry you are even though you know he fell back asleep almost immediately after he recovered from the shock of receiving a surprise kick to the buttocks in the middle of the night. But you are so mad that your blood is almost certainly boiling and it takes an hour for you to calm down enough to fall back asleep. Except by then, said husband is snoring and you start to give serious thought to that article you read yesterday about married people who choose to sleep in separate bedrooms. But even that won’t solve the root of the problem. What you need is separate bathrooms, or – at the very least – separate toilets. And so you start building your dream bathroom in your head, and that is the only way you are finally – and mercifully – able to fall back asleep.

Then the next morning, you have to get up half an hour earlier than you wanted to because you have to take another shower. Because you just aren’t 100% sure about the 4 AM disinfecting job you did three hours earlier. It seems practical to play it safe and shower than risk growing some kind of weird toilet bacteria on your backside over the course of Tuesday afternoon. But showering throws your whole morning off, and you feel grumpy. You know it is going to be a long day.

Stupid Trevor.