la vie privée, s’il vous plaît!

I know my fellow moms can relate to this: the minute you walk into the bathroom, every single one of your offspring is knocking on the door, beseeching you to solve all the problems of the known universe as you sit on your throne. And if you have an older house like mine, and the door either a) doesn’t lock, or b) doesn’t even close, those said offspring don’t even bother knocking – they just barge right in to do their beseeching in person and up close.

When we first looked at this house, I have to admit, I was a little put off by the master bathroom. I’ve watched plenty of HGTV, but there’s only so much you can do with a mauve toilet and tub, runway lights and wall-to-wall mirrors. And that “so much” is pretty much nothing! I figured, “So what? I’ll just spruce up the rest of the house and simply close that door every morning and I won’t even think about it.” But, there was one little problem. The bathroom door wouldn’t close! It couldn’t close; twenty-five years of settling had left it unable to function.

About a year ago, when we painted our master bedroom, Augie took down the bathroom door and shaved off the wood until we were finally able to close the door. I was so excited to use my flashback-to-the-eighties bathroom without any unwanted company! I waltzed in there and locked the door and started to go about my business when one of my little blessings simply pushed against the door and popped it open, despite it’s being locked! So much for privacy!

But sometimes a lack of privacy and locked doors can be a good thing – like when you sit down to go about your business and realize someone has pilfered your roll of TP. It was there when you got up this morning, but now it has disappeared. And the bad thing is, you already know that was the last roll in the room, so there’s no use doing a quick scramble over to the linen closet to grab another one. But you don’t worry; no, you are not dismayed, because you know any second now your loyal subjects will be pushing open your closed-and-locked-but-not-really door and beseeching you, in person and up close.

Minutes pass by. “Um, kids? Can anybody hear me? Is anybody listening? Hello? Hello? Can somebody help me? Where are you guys? It’s beseeching time! Come on, people, I need some toilet paper!!!!!!!”

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. For five minutes but it felt like forever. And then I knew what I had to do. And never in my wildest imaginings did I think I would ever be thanking heaven for that other lovely feature in my flashback-to-the-eighties bathroom. Now I know that decade was good for something other than Aqua Net, leg-warmers, and shoulder pads: