The Threat

Meelyn, Aisling and I share a bathroom, the upstairs bathroom. It is big (I think maybe it used to be a bedroom) with a sweet, low barrel roof that gives it the kind of cozy feeling you like in a bathroom: A lot of warm air can nestle snugly up against a ten foot ceiling, we've found.

Our upstairs bathroom is adorable, although we'd like to redecorate sometime soon with something more sophisticated, now that the girls are in their teens. Our shower curtain is a medium blue gingham, appliqued with chenille flowers and ladybugs in pastel colors, apple green, lavender, yellow and tangerine. We also have the requisite matching toothbrush holder, tissue box cover and soap dish because my particular brand of obsessive compulsion requires that everything in life come in a matched set. If there is an accessory, I have to have it.

The rugs on the floor are pale yellow and the curtain that hangs in front of our linen closet door is of tangerine. The sink and vanity (including the drawer pulls) are vintage 1960s, as is the mirror, and I have yet to figure out how to rip them off the walls and take them with me when we move someday without the new residents noticing. They've obviously been beautifully cared for over the years and I love them past all reason, considering that they don't love me back. Kind of like Wimzie.

So, you might think, what is the pill in all this jam?

Meelyn and Aisling prefer to shower at night. I am an adamant morning showerer. And I happen to be a morning shower person who is SICK AND TIRED OF FINDING A SLIMY LUMP OF HAIR ON THE DRAIN COVER EVERY STINKING MORNING.

I have told the girls about this over and over again: "It's disgusting to leave YOUR HAIR in the drain. Heaven knows, if God provided, I'd love to move to a house with a million bathrooms in it and I'd take my own fifty or sixty favorites and keep them bright and clean and you two could choose your own and mess them up like the PIGS YOU ARE, and I'd put my vintage 1960s vanity, sink and mirror in my own best bathroom and never deal with the likes of you again, but as things are, I have to share this space with you and if I have to pick up one more nasty clump of hair, you want to know what I'm going to do?"

The girls gazed at me with neutral expressions on their faces and shook their heads "no" simultaneously. Oh, if they'd been aware of the pleasure I would have taken in banging those heads smartly together just then! The wad of wet hair I'd pulled off the drain cover this morning was particularly gross and some of the hair got stuck in the setting of my wedding ring and it wouldn't come off my hand and....[shudder]

I leaned a bit closer to them and spoke with in a tone of menace. "I am going to get that slimy hair and I am going to think about which one of you took the last shower last night and then I am going to carry that hair out of this bathroom into your bedroom and I am going to turn back the coverlet on that girl's bed and PUT IT ON HER PILLOW."

Meelyn was shocked and offended. "You wouldn't!"

"Oh, yes. Yes, I think you'll find that I would."

Aisling regarded me thoughtfully through her glasses, her lips pursed. "If you put the hair on my pillow, will you please wrap it in some tissue first? Or a washcloth. I don't want that soapy wet yucky hair on my pillow, please."

Maybe I didn't make myself clear.