Have a seat

I love it when it’s my turn! It’s so fun to play with ideas and see what might possibly be eeked out into a semi-entertaining post.

I thought I might write about condiments, and how Ellie is personally offended by the very existence of ketchup.

I thought I might write about scheduling the hour long reflexology massages that Beth and I are going to have next week after the big run, and my thought process when asked: "Do you prefer a male or a female technician?"

I thought I might write more about my girl, maybe the funny encounter we had over the weekend when I made her try on and judge every pair of undies in her unholy mess of a dainty drawer.

Or maybe the fact that she is terrified of the automatic flush. She is paralyzed with fear when perched atop a suspicious toilet. I don’t know how she pees with this much angst. You should see her face. I’ve told her about the motion sensors, and so she is frozen. She. Will. Not. Move. Anything. But. Her. Eyebrows. She has very expressive eyebrows. When she is done, she wants me to whisk her to what she considers a safe and reasonable distance from the scary toilet. Only then will she wipe and get on with her life.

When my niece, who is now a gorgeous almost-16 year old superstar, was little, she would only use white toilet seats. I remember one time we were at Laguardia, and my mom was taking this child to the bathroom, and you know those stairs by baggage claim? My sister yelled up to my mom: “Make sure the seats aren’t black!”

I didn’t have kids at that time, so I just chalked this up to generally weird things that I might need to know about kids some day. Black seats = bad. Okay, check.

But now that I have had the distinct pleasure to spend many, many, many hours of my important life in bathroom stalls with children of my own and often of my friends and acquaintances, I understand the critical issues around toilet seat selection.

At home, no matter how gross or uninviting your bathroom appears, you can sit on the seat. It’s your family; those are the arses of your peeps. Friends’ houses are fairly safe, but you have to be careful if you’re using the kids’ bathroom. Chances are very good that you’ll sit on some wet. Ick. I don’t care whose wet it is, I don’t care if you yourself just cleaned the toilet and you know that it’s rinse residue on you. It’s a terrible, terrible thing to sit in wet on the toilet.

If YOU sprinkle when you tinkle, ARE you neat and wipe the seat?

Good God, where was I?

What the hell am I talking about?

Toilet seats?!
Okay. So it’s a post about toilet seats! What fun!

There is the matter of toilet seats, or lack thereof, at the beach. The thing is, it’s so awesome to have a toilet at the beach! There is almost always toilet paper, and stall doors are for chumps anyway. I have no beef with hovering over the creepy metal rim once the seal has been broken.

Beach = Beer = Bathroom. The circle of life.

When my kids need to pee, I just want them to go in the ocean! The boy is too old and worldly to be dragged into the doorless ladies’ room, and the men’s room? Filled with crazy murderous loons and pervs, obviously. But boys can just pee on a tree or a rock, whatever. My girl? If she needs to join me, it can get a little tricky. She can’t hover; her legs are like one foot long. Sometimes there are seat covers, those are handy. But they always rip, and are you supposed to punch out the middle hole, or just let the force of your stream bust through it? We usually either fashion our own seat cover out of toilet paper, or just give the seat a good wipe down before placing her precious sandy buns atop. It’s a gamble, but at least there is no chance of automatic flushing. The real danger is in what you’re standing in. Ew.

Have you ever seen those rigs where you press a button and a plastic seat cover scoots around from one end of the seat to the other? Do you trust them?

What about this:
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/16139635/detail.html

Are you fucking kidding me?

But I would be totally psyched to find one at the beach.