I race to the loo in the middle of the night in a drug induced stupor. [translation = Vicadin after dentist] I make it just in time and sit groggily. I stand up immediately, snap on the light and turn to check. Someone has put the lid down. Hallelujah! My nose takes my eyes very close to the lid for further examination. [translation = no bifocals] For some reason, the lid is covered with green luminous slime? Ah! Toothpaste! [translation = the Shrek movie merchandised version of children's Colgate] I stand up again to contemplate.

Teeth cleaning, for my children and many others, is a very large hurdle.

The amount of slime is directly correlated to the number of attempts that someone has made to try and squeeze toothpaste onto a toothbrush. [translation = fine motor skills, sequencing, pincher control, hand strength and co-ordination] Someone gets full marks for effort. [translation = as well as a great deal of staying power for a less preferred, if not aversive, activity!]

I flip up the lid, turn and resume the position. I stand abruptly and skip round to examine further evidence, evidence of a not so successful nature. I scowl and rearrange the ice-pack on my chin. I cannot work out why I am so unduly miffed? When I think of the years that I have spent changing dirty diapers with my hands, as well as cleaning up dirty bottoms, you would think I should be immune? There again, I have never actually sat in someone else's dirty diaper. I decide to be logical, resist scatological. I am uncertain if I am irrational or irritable or both? I dither between the sin of pride or purity or possibly prudity?

I am paralysed by indecision: sterlize my body or the loo, which to do first?  I try and remember what I did last time such a dilemma befell me?  Like when I used to bathe them altogether, aged 4, two and a half, and a year old.  One  stood up in the bath and vomited over the other two? I pull a face and then notice some grouchy old woman, just next to me. I peer a little closer until my breath steams up the mirror.

I take my grouchy self to the shower to cool off, clean up and refresh my battery. Who cares if it's three in the morning! No doubt in a few years, if not sooner, if senility continues on it’s current trajectory, I'll be wearing incontinence pants myself. [translation = full circle]

Old wives tales taken from ‘other obscure sayings’ =
[London, England circa 1558 attrib. Anon*]

“There be some, for whom cleanliness, is always in favour,
But there’s others, who allow their duties to waiver,
So……
Bathe in the moonlight and ere after dawn,
Yea’ll be scrubbin the toilet for the rest of the morn’.”

* Some old barmy bat in Jolly Old San Jose.