He Blogs, She Blogs 2.0: The Bathroom

Captain Dumbass (The Male)

He Blogs/She Blogs, been awhile, hasn't it? It's like we're coming back from summer vacation or something. How do you like the new digs? I'm thinking we should hang a picture or two. So for our inaugural post on our new site we're taking on the contentious issue of the bathroom.

So who spends the most time in the bathroom? As this is HBSB I'm sure you're expecting me to rant on about how long my wife takes and blah blah blah? Well that's not going to happen. I could pull the man card here and tell you Supreme Leader takes forever in the can and then fart and scratch myself, but she reads my posts and our couch is not comfortable. I take the longest in the bathroom. There, I said it. It's me. In my defense though, she's really really small so there is a lot more of me to clean. Plus, all my best ideas come to me when I'm in the shower, so I need extra time for artistic development. It's a good thing I don't have a white board with waterproof markers in there or I'd never get out.



Like that counter top? I think that when my house was built in 1977 they gave Mrs. Roper a bag of blow and asked her to come up with the colours. So that's my arsenal, the whole thing. Not sure how it eats up so much time, but it does. I will also admit to taking longer on the throne. But that contributes to mental health. I grab a book, lock the door and hole up in my Fortress of Solitude for a few moments of peace. The rabid monkeys can beat on the door all they like, but they can't get me. HA HA HAAAA!

I have a question for all the ladies? What gives with the beauty products? Specifically, the gross tonnage you acquire over the decades but can't seem to part with? That mascara from your senior prom? Time to go! The last ounce of conditioner that's been haunting the back of the shower since Clinton was in office? I think you can part with it now. The nasty shaving gel cans that are all crusty and rusting around the bottoms? Ick. I'm lucky in that Supreme Leader is not so bad at this. Not so bad.

I let my wife read this before I sent it off. She laughed, but at the end there was a look that promised retribution. Stinging retribution. The kind that drags on and makes you wish you were dead. Alright, maybe not, but there was a promise of something in her smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

Petra a.k.a. The Wise (*Young*) Mommy (The Female)

Ah, He Blogs, She Blogs, how I have missed you so! It's nice to be back, isn't it? Today we are taking on the topic of the bathroom, since we all know that there is plenty to wax on about when it comes to men, women and the bathroom. Men stink it up, women stay in there too long. Women love candles and potpourri and sometimes there are towels that are just too pretty to use, while men will not think twice before lathering up their nether-regions with the most beautiful hand carved lavender soap (how rude!). But none of those issues are what sticks out in my mind when I think about my introduction to sharing a bathroom with a member of the opposite sex.

If there was one thing that I was unprepared for when I hastily moved in with my now-husband, then boyfriend of six months, it was the bathroom issue. Little did I know that this little, tiny room, so small compared to all the rest of the rooms in the house, could cause so much tension, grief and misunderstanding in our relationship. As a naive young lass of 21 years old, I faced a harsh lesson in male/female relations and quickly got a crash course in the bathroom practices of the male homosapien.

First of all, the magazines next to the toilet were NOT to be removed and put back in the magazine rack. As a woman, I have always spent a maximum of three minutes or so on the throne, unless I was having some kind of gastrointestinal distress or I was sitting on the toilet while watching a girlfriend do her hair. So the idea of needing reading material on hand next to the toilet baffled me. But I soon came to find out why my man needed stimulation during elimination, when he would actually schedule his trips to the bathroom because he needed THAT much time.

Nor did I realize that after spending that 20 minutes in the bathroom he may actually come out and say to me "Hey, you have to come look at this!" Yeah, I'm serious.

Now, as time went on, we began to fall into a routine with the bathroom and it became more comfortable. I got used to the little tiny hairs in the sink from shaving and not bothering to rinse out the sink after, and he got used to the shelves and shelves of hair products, creams and lotions that cluttered up the bathroom. I stocked up on air freshener and eventually didn't gag anymore when I entered after he had spent some quality "reading" time in there and he figured out which of the towels were not to be used because of the gorgeous embroidered flowers. Then the unthinkable happened.

One day, I found myself leaving the bathroom door open when I went to the bathroom. It just didn't seem necessary to close it and there was always the possibility that I would have something really important that I might need to shout to him in the other room while I was in there. Then came the day when he actually came into the bathroom while I was actually on the toilet to brush his teeth. There you have it folks. You have officially reached the point of no return when you are emptying your bladder and bowels in front of your significant other. Why stop there? Why not have conversations while he is in the shower while you do your hair? Or bring him new reading material when he is dropping kids off at the pool and doesn't have anything good to read?

Yup, that's true love.

So after eight years, he still complains about the abundance of products in the bathroom from time to time, and occasionally I throw up in my mouth a little bit when he drops a particularly pungent deuce, and I don't think that will ever change. And sometimes I even almost accidentally leave the door open at other people's houses when I go to the bathroom because I never do it at home. I have accepted that my days of having any kind of privacy or modesty are gone and sometimes I even appreciate the extra five minutes I get to talk to my husband when he is in the shower since I don't see him all that often.

If you had asked me 10 years ago if any of this would be so, I would have replied with a resounding "Hells no!" But life changes, folks, and you just have to "go with the flow."

No pun intended.