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Padded toilet Seats

To paraphrase a line from the HBO series Weeds, it feels like I’m pooping on a mushroom. In my experience with these super cushiony cushions, it appears there is a rule: Once you reach retirement age, you are required to equip every toilet in your house with a padded toilet seat – and preferably make it the color of poop brown or powder blue.

Pre-Warmed Seats

But not just any warm seats. Chairs or couches that have been heated by the ass of some other person. It feels like a violation to my ass to be warmed by the heat of someone else’s ass. But I’m not completely self-centered on this issue. I feel slightly embarrassed having myself created a hot seat, knowing that someone else will soon sit there.

Cheap-ass Toilet Paper

Often popular with mother-in-laws. However, I suspect that if you take a look around you’ll see this particular low-end toilet paper is only in her guest bathrooms, not in the master suite. So “No thank you, Dollar Store”. I will not rub my ass raw with your product.

Slivers

It’s not good to get a sliver anywhere… but let’s face it. While you can get a sliver out of your own finger, getting a sliver out of your butt check requires some outside assistance. And if you don’t have a spouse or close family member near-by, that can be an odd one to work into conversation with a friend.

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Since day and age I am in the habit of using four sheets of toilet paper. I buy recycled toilet paper in a large discount supermarket outlet which is located in the outskirts of the city; 17 kilometres from the village where I live.

I have to say city because the inhabitants insist. Beyond any doubt they will be offended if you call their beloved city anything less. Although I think it’s more like a town.

Back in my own village, that is the village where I recite at the present time, they do not sell recycled toilet paper. As a matter of fact they don’t do much recycling. Even the glass recycling containers have been removed. We are lucky to have a shop at all.

A neighbouring town has been more fortunate. They have recently been blessed with a large discount supermarket themselves. The new discount supermarket, which stands only a few hundredth yards away from another supermarket, has yet to be opened. They seem to have problems with their liquor licence.

To be honest I do not understand why the shop was built in that particular place. More to the point; do they really believe a shop like that will pay itself off? At the moment nobody benefits from the edifice, except the neighbouring supermarket.

Sometimes I wonder what I would do if those big supermarkets wouldn’t exist. I can vaguely remember that we had a vegetable shop in our village. You had to decent a few steps to get into a kind of cellar where they kept cabbages, potatoes, cauliflowers and other large vegetables. There was no such thing as exotic fruits or vegetables as far as I can recall; except for the occasional oranges and tangerines.

We also had a butcher, who did his own slaughtering and made his own sausages. When I was about eight or nine there were still two butchers in our village; they were the survivors. Once there had been as many as three or four. I can’t really tell because that was before my time.

At the time my brother was working at the bakery; the only one left in the village. They had undergone the same faith as the butchers. The village had gone from five bakers to just the one. Actually there were two; to save themselves they had made a fusion.                            

Early in the morning before school I would get a loaf of bread for my mother. With the shop still closed at the front I entered the bakery via the back door. Opening the door the aroma of the fresh baked bread entered my nose. Inside the bakery I was usually enthusiastically greeted by one of the owners. He knew what I needed and let me choose one myself.

On the way back home, which wasn’t too far luckily for my mother; I began to eat from the fresh baked bread. Nothing tastes better then a fresh baked loaf of bread. The crust is crunchy but not yet too hard to break your teeth.

Bread sold in any supermarket nowadays isn’t even related to the bread the bakers made in our old bakery. Even the bakery itself doesn’t exist any more. It had to make room for a new shopping centre. That’s what they call progress.

I don’t think it was such a progress. However I don’t think the little grocery shop in our village sold recycled toilet paper, so in a way we have improved. As a matter of fact we have dramatically improved; the large discount shop in the city sells bread machines from time to time.

They have a two and a half month cycle in which products return to the shop, so if you missed the cycle like I did the other day with the multiple USB ports; do not worry, they’ll be back. I wish I had a two and a half month cycle. Unfortunately I haven’t. Sometimes it even comes twice a month.

The discount shops are everywhere now. They’re everywhere in Europe. It’s handy though when you go on a holiday abroad. There is always something familiar, which reduces the chances of homesickness. It also makes the life of our immigrants a lot easier. They can work in their own environment and if their lucky, which they usually are, they can speak their native language while working at the till.

Having those discounts shops around can also give a lot of confusion; for instance some people believe that we eat the kind of food that’s for sale in the discount shops where I come from: they’re close, but it isn’t quite what it should be. Especially the sweats, biscuit (we say cookies) and cheese sections can be improved. However I can’t complain; after all they do sell recycled toilet paper.

The classic TP. A favorite prank of all time. Best part about it is that all you need is a good amount of Toilet Paper rolls and a victim to pull this prank on.

It’s never good to do something like this spontaneously. TP-ing requires planning if you want to do it right. Buy your rolls early on in the day. It looks suspicious if you go in at night to buy them. Next, you need to know what time your group is going to TP the house. Make sure its later on in the night, so that the people are all asleep.

Now that youre at the house, DON’T MAKE NOISE. I mean a little sneeze or whispers are all right, but laughing your ass off at yelling probably will get you caught. Or at least make you leave early only having done a crappy job. OK, time to throw the rolls. Unwrap about an arms length of the toilet paper, and throw it into a tree. Let it bounce on the other side, pick it up, and throw it some more. Make sure you throw it into a high branch so it is hard to get it down.

OK, youre all set!

Note: IF youre going to drive, park a few blocks away. If they happen to see your car, and you know the people youre tp-ing, theres a chance theyll recognize it and know who you are.

When you get a call that company's coming to stay over, what do you do? Clean the house? Hide the clutter? Go grocery shopping? These are all fairly standard procedure here at Chez Wheedleton. However, there are two visitors - and only two - that warrant a preparation procedure all its own. 

Lest I mislead those of you with senses of humor similar to my own, my parents are not (ahem) "crappy" people. That is to say, they don't make copious use of this most essential personal cleanliness tool. But their visits always evoke that Pavlovian response in me: Omigosh! Mom's coming! I need to go buy toilet paper! Even if the basement is already well-stocked with ample supply, I cannot fight the urge to go buy just one more package.

So, you ask, since they're not over-zealous with the TP use, why the panic response?

In a nutshell: Parents visited my first little apartment paid for with my first teaching job. Snowed in - raging blizzard, several feet of snow. Very little groceries. Down to one roll of toilet paper even before they got there. (Bree Hodge, I definitely was not.) Waited out the worst of the storm. Dug out my parents' Ford Escort to brave the elements and remedy a potentially disastrous situation. Swung by my then-boyfriend/now-husband's place to pick him up (me so hoping he'd get snowed in with us.) Ate at a nearly deserted Bob Evans with travelers stranded by the storm. Grabbed the very last package of toilet paper at the grocery store. Dropped off then-boyfriend/now-husband back at his place. (Darn!) Slipped and slid our way back to my place. Endured endless ribbing about "what might have been," had we remained TP-less. 

And so, to this day, I am never, never, never short on toilet paper when my parents come to visit.