There has been a smear of liquid foundation on my bed sheet for a week.
It looks like poop. And it’s right at about butt level, too. If someone were to accidentally wander into my bedroom, they would probably jump to the conclusion that I’d sharted during sex.
I know *I* would jump to that conclusion.
Fortunately, only my husband, my son, and I ever go into my bedroom. And I know this to be the case. So when I was doing my makeup in bed (why) and accidentally pumped my little bottle of foundation too hard and squirted it all over the sheets (dumb), I made the controversial decision to:
- Give it a half-assed blot with some toilet paper.
- Abandon the pretense.
- Toss the duvet over it and act like nothing ever happened.
I didn’t decide these things because I’m lazy (I am). I didn’t decide them because I’m gross (also yes). I decided them because I hate changing sheets with Every. Fiber. Of. My. Being.
Now, now. Calm your tits. Don’t go running to the phone to inform Social Services that I’m an unfit mother. I may be gross but I’m not that gross. I change the bed sheets just as regularly as anyone else. It’s just that in this particular instance I had JUST changed them. Like the DAY before.
And I really, really, really didn’t want to change them again.
I felt a *teensy* bit guilty about not doing it. Just a teensy. So I had a mini-conversation with myself in order to justify my reasoning:
Me: “You should probably change those sheets.”
Myself: “Don’t be ridiculous. Look at that. It’s just an itty bitty blemish on an otherwise pristine set of sheets.”
Me: “But it looks like poop.”
Myself: “So?”
Me: “So, poop is gross.”
Myself: “It might look like poop, but it isn’t poop. There’s no smell. There’s no germs. There’s no hygiene issue here.”
Me: “But…”
Myself: “Oh, so you really want to rip off all the sheets and fucking do all that work right now?”
Me: “No.”
Myself: “Well, then.”
Me: “…”
Myself: “Do we have any Cheetos? I’m hungry for Cheetos.”
And thus the sheets remain unchanged.
Oh, don’t judge. When my son was just a little guy with what I would characterize as an “unpredictable esophagus,” I was changing sheets constantly. That kid could barf, and he did it a lot. Every time he ate something funny. Every time he got stressed. Every time he caught a cold. Every time he took a ride in the car. Every time anything happened at all. He was a master of the violent and overly productive retch, and a disproportionate amount of this retching happened at night. In bed. On clean sheets.
Still. A mom has to do what a mom has to do. My husband and I swiftly came to an arrangement: he cleaned up the kid, and I cleaned up the sheets. Each of us did these jobs reluctantly, but we did them nonetheless, looking stoically forward to the day that our son would grow out of his incessant horking. Which he eventually did.
Then, what seemed like a blink of an eye later, the nightly nosebleeds started.
It turned out that my son had a bunch of blood vessels in his nose that were too close to the surface, and he ended up needing nasal cautery surgery to fix the problem. But it took us about a year to a) definitively diagnose the problem, b) try out non-surgical options, and then c) convince our son that he was not going go to into surgery and wake up dead.
A whole year. Of bloody pillowcases and sheets.
*shakes head*
*sighs*
Fortunately, my son is now six and he no longer pukes at the drop of a hat. The nosebleed problem is solved. There are no more overnight accidents (which I didn’t even bother to mention, because we all know what they entail.) And last but not least: our two elderly cats, who were also a dab hand at expressing biohazard all over our bed sheets, have at long last crossed the Rainbow Bridge. So I’m finally back on a “normal” routine of changing the linens.
So, a smear of foundation? It didn’t come from a butt. It didn’t come from a nose. It didn’t come from an unpredictable esophagus. It is NOT EVEN A THING. It can wait till the weekend.
IT. CAN. WAIT. Trust.