My Special Purpose

Hey all. Whazzzup? Here is my...

INNOCUOUS ORTS OF SORTS: Some people search their whole lives to find a special purpose. Some do find one. Many others ultimately give up and settle into a routine of mundane predictability, or if you are King Henry II, married to Eleanor of Aquitaine, you may simply “blunder onto peace” while waiting for the King of France to grow up and fight or some such sort of thing. Me? I have blundered onto my own special purpose and I don’t mean like Steve Martin in his movie, “The Jerk”.


What is my special purpose, you may whisper aloud, eagerly inching forward in your chair, your nose mere inches from the screen? You’ll never guess it, especially not my own mother, since I showed no inclination toward any such talent as a child. It is…drum roll please… Official Toilet Paper Roll Changer of Sodium Manor. Ta-Dahhhhh! Yes, I have deduced my purpose with the sieve-like penetrating mind of a Sherlock Holmes, the seductive deductive reasoning of a Hercule Poirot, the, the, angelic visions of Bernadette. Too much? Ok, well, anyway, I AM the Roller Derby Queen. How else can one account for the fact that if I do not change the toilet paper roll on Sodium Manor, it will not get changed? I know it’s not rocket science, but I did just save a bunch of money on my car insurance. Are they related? Perhaps. All I know is I am the changer of the roll and I am the only one who is apparently able to touch the spare rolls from the hall closet. Or, if by some miracle, someone dons an Ove Glove and hot potatoes a roll onto the bathroom counter, well, making it on to the actual spindle is another epic tale indeed. It sits on the counter staring straight up like a Cyclops, never making the leap to the trapeze bar. I am fairly certain Tammy “could” do it, maybe, with some practice, but she does practically everything else in the house, so when would she ever have time to master an intricate process such as this? Time and time again I am struck dumb, staring at the holder, mesmerized into ogling the tiny cardboard chamber, hanging gloomily yet somehow taunting me, daring me to sit down anyway. It’s tiny bits of end roll scrap clinging to the tube like it cut itself shaving several times. At our house this is an almost daily occurrence, and yet am I the only one, through sheer timing and panache, who glimpses this intimate baring of the roll’s soul? It would seem so, since it is always I removing the spent tube and replacing it with a new double sized roll. Kind of like welcoming in Baby New Year at midnight; so long Father Time, Hello, Charmin. I now own my talent and brag of it often. It used to come out as a bellowed question to the sky, loud and exasperated, “Am I the only one who knows HOW to change the toilet paper rolls in this house?” To, “I AM the only one who knows how to change the toilet paper rolls in this house.” So there you go. I own it now, and may we never have a drip dry "incident" again.

Aside from the epiphany of yes, I am queen of the roll call, we finished up Jake’s birthday weekend Sunday. Saturday we were off to the Mall of America where other people change the rolls. He and two buddies played around at Nick Universe all day while we shopped for Sarah's confirmation dress. Found one. Yips.

This past Saturday we went down to Burnsville to see Cathy and Andrea and have dinner and play games. The dinner rocked! I even ate not only mine, but the rest of Tammy's asparagus. That chicken sauce is to faint over. Tammy made us all homemade chocolate brownies with walnuts, and they were frosted too. Score. Then it was a good old fashioned game of Monopoly, complete with old wooden houses and hotels and white one dollar bills. We had a blast. Tammy won, the land tycoon, but for the first time ever I actually had Boardwalk and Park Place and had a hotel on each. It was my eventual undoing of course, but still. I had Trump hair for the tiniest of bits.

In the meantime, I better get going to work today and then its Idol Tuesday. Enjoy your week everyone. I love you all!