"Sometimes you have to laugh at yourself; you'd cry your eyes out if you didn't." — Emily Saliers

Because our bathroom no longer exists (more remodel photos coming tomorrow), we've had to make alternate personal hygiene arrangements. As much as I'd love to go three weeks without showering, I don't think my customers (or friends, or wife) would appreciate that.

On the weekends, we're showering at friends' houses. During the week, I'm showering here at Custom Box Service. Though this is the shower I used throughout my childhood, it's remained largely unused for the past decade. The tub has become a holding area for paper supplies, cleaning products, and spiders. (Lots of spiders.)

Last week, I cleared out the tub and set up the bathroom as my shower for the month of July. It's a little creepy showering amongst so many spiders (next to rotting, crumbling tilework). What's even creepier is the cache of clothes I discovered.

In 1997, 1998, and 1999 I was riding my bike almost daily. I often brought exercise clothes to work. Apparently I wasn't so good about taking the clothes home. I hauled three Hefty bags filled with clothes to Oak Grove with me on Friday, and on Saturday I sorted through them.

I found:

• four sweatshirts, including my Mariners sweatshirt and the sweatshirt I picked up off the road
• my skunk clothes
• fourteen (nominally) white t-shirts
• ten pairs of socks, including one pair of ankle socks
• my OPB t-shirt
• one of our good hand towels from home (oops!)
• two of Kris' Eddie Bauer shirts ("Why do you have one of my shirts?" "It's not one shirt; it's two shirts." "Why would you possibly have these?" "I have no idea.")
• three pairs of jeans: Kirkland (Costco) 36x30, Levis 34x30, and Kirkland 32x30 (the latter of which reeked of cat piss) — note the range of sizes reflecting my ever-fluctuating wasteline
• seven pairs of (nominally) white undershorts (sorry, no photos)
• an old pair of Birkenstocks
• one pair of black shorts that I've had at least since 1989
• another pair of shorts
• three baseball caps: Seattle Mariners, Boise Cascade, Canby Ford Ford
• two flannel shirts
• two other miscellaneous shirts
• and a pair of gardening gloves

"You can't keep all that," Kris told me when she saw the pile of clothes on the parlor floor. Her brow was furrowed. She thinks I have too many clothes.

I didn't want to keep all of these clothes. I saved the (nominally) white t-shirts for rags, but a lot of the stuff ended up in the trash. After five years at the shop, it had grown rather ripe.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2003 — Fear of the Future   In which cousin Tammy shares her fear of Communists, and then I do the same.

2002 — Tiny Sliver of Free Time   Amazingly, I have about twenty minutes of free time to kill while my client's hard drive finishes formatting.

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