Taking a bath at Tax Time

This isn't a complaint about the government taking all of my money. Actually, I think there are a great many things that we, as a society, should be paying for right now that we seem to be saving for my kids or grandkids. When we are all old and in nursing homes and the kids won't even splurge to get us the "Kraft" brand mac and cheese we won't have any room to argue.

"Just eat your Western Family food-like substance, gramps!"

"Did you at least put half a stick of butter in it?"

"Half a stick of butter? Where do you think you are? The Ritz?"

It still sounds better than Spaghettios.

Anyway, like I mentioned in an earlier post: We are a dimwitted family of losers working entry-level jobs and we don't have health insurance. We didn't have to limbo under the poverty pole this year on our taxes. We could have worn high heels if we wanted to without worrying about hitting our heads. This means that our tax return was better than expected. It's the time of year when it pays to be poor. We had a family surplus and we searched our minds and our souls for the best possible use of this extra money.

After careful deliberation, it was actually a quick and clear decision that, for the first time in our lives, we should buy... towels. When you get married, everyone buys you towels. You have towels coming out of your ears. You can be a super hero in a whole assortment of colors of terry cloth. A different super hero every day, practically.

But then the years fly past. I met my wife almost 10 years ago and we have never bought towels together. If there is a gaping hole in our marraige then truly this is it. And you should see the towels we've been using. This is a topic that my wife has forbade me to blog about, but now that we have bought NEW towels together I think it is safe to mention it.

Most of are old towels are in pretty poor shape with a lot of thin spots where the threads have come out but some of them are pretty outragous. Not even a four sided object anymore. Torn up. Stained. I took a shower one night and the only towel in the cabinet was the shape of some crazy undiscovered continent. There was no logical way to dry yourself with it aside from wadding it up and dabbing it around. And big tough guys like me don't like to dab. The entire time I used it, I sat there wondering, "How did this towel get past my wife's domestic sensors because if she knew the towel existed it would surely be vaporized 1984-style, instantly." And then something even crazier happened. I ended up using that towel again. TWICE! Under the same circumstances.

When I mentioned it to my wife she told me she had only saved it because it was during the dead of winter and our pet rabbit was sleeping in our kitchen and she kept meaning to make it a rabbit-only towel but somehow it kept making it into the regular towel rotation. That was also the point when she told me I must never tell anyone about the towel.

When we were at the store buying new towels, I was at the counter ready to settle up when my wife held up a bathroom rug. She said, "This matches our walls!"

I said, "We can get it if it's 10 bucks."

She said, "It's $18. But it will tie the bathroom together. I think we should get it."

At which point I held up my fists in front of me shook them like maracas, feigning excitement. In a womanly voice I bellowed, "Ooh! A bathroom all tied together!"

Yes. I'm an ass. You don't need to tell me.

But the girl at the cash register chimed in to defend my wife, "It WOULD be nice to have a bathroom all tied together. It's not for you. It's for your company."

I looked at the girl and said, "You don't know my friends. All they care about is candy. They don't care about bathrooms tied together."

But we got the bath mat anyway. Enjoy, patrons of my potty.

Yeah. So that's a lot of talking just to tell you we bought some new towels and it's a boring thing to do when you get some extra money, but I discussed with my wife the possibility of reaching a point when we DIDN'T have extra money but couldn't go another moment without new towels. The prospect of increasing our debt someday for towels was too depressing. It almost seems worse than buying new tires for your car.