My late morning tossing and turning ritual that has become waaaaaay too commonplace, together with the faulty-snowblower snoring pattern of my wife, conspired to prop open my eyes at the ungodly hour of 5:30 AM on Saturday.
In a pre-dawn haze of sleepy eyes and weary thoughts, I saw a light coming from the end of the hallway and I knew something was askew, because I was the last one awake the night before…and I never leave lights on.
That light in the hallway I saw at 5:30 AM on a Saturday was emanating from the guest bathroom, and that guest bathroom is where my 9-year-old daughter was throwing a one-woman mad-scientist-themed celebration. Like a boss.
We call her the Mouse not because she’s historically a sneaky character, although the nickname would prove fitting on this particular occasion, because:
- There was baby powder on the ceiling and caked onto the walls.
- A sloppy mixture of toothpaste, mouthwash, hand lotion, shampoo + conditioner, eyeglass cleaner, nail polish remover, and just about every other stray, hotel sample size bottle of liquid in the medicine cabinet coating the white faux-granite countertop and dripping down the bowl of the sink into the drain.
- Oh and lest I forget the itty bitty pieces of toilet paper she’d stuck in that wet concoction like helpless flies trapped in a cobweb, just waiting for the sweet embrace of death. Speaking of murder, what in the actual hell was happening in here?!?
It’s not that we don’t foster a healthy environment of creativity and imaginative play for our children but the Great Guest Bathroom Incident of 2016 was a step (or a thousand giant steps) too far. At least she was quiet enough to let everyone sleep in peace…wait I shouldn’t be complimenting her — that’s even sneakier and more dastardly!
[Cue awkward, ‘out of left field’ sports analogy]
Sometimes being a dad is like standing in the batter’s box against a knuckleball pitcher. You know the ball will approach home plate but you have no idea which path it’ll take to get there. You have no idea that one Saturday you’ll be up at 5:30 AM staring at your tween daughter standing in the middle of what could pass for a backstage bathroom after a rock concert.
I had no plans to spend my Saturday morning supervising a massive bathroom cleanup but I reached for the Clorox bleach and got to work scrubbing the medicine cabinet paella off of the counter while Mouse slowly began to dislodge the TP from her bizarre bathroom stew and wipe the fragrant white powder off the cherry red walls.
I know that no matter what she does in that bathroom next — and I am fairly certain she’ll attempt another secret experiment someday — I’ll be able to face the aftermath of it with Clorox bleach. I just hope, with fingers-crossed and toes too, that I don’t have to face it at 5:30 AM.
The Clorox Reach For Bleach Sweepstakes!!
Enter for your chance to win a sweet prize package of:
Clorox® Bleach products PLUS
• $150 gift card
• 2 Cotton bath towels
• 3 acrylic storage canisters
• 1 style station organizer
Simply follow the sweepstakes rules outlined below (and explained in full here) before the end of October, have fun and good luck!
TO ENTER VIA FACEBOOK: During the Promotion Period, access Facebook on your desktop, laptop or mobile device and share your original Selfie reacting to the question “What face do you make when you find a mess in your bathroom that makes you want to reach for Clorox Bleach to clean it up?” Attach your Selfie as a comment on my sponsored Clorox® post on the Out With The Kids Facebook page, using the hashtags #sweepstakes and #ReachforBleach.
TO ENTER VIA TWITTER: Tweet an original Selfie reacting to the question “What face do you make when you find a mess in your bathroom that makes you want to reach for Clorox Bleach to clean it up?”, and be sure to tag @OWTK and use hashtags #sweepstakes and #ReachforBleach. Note: You must make sure your tweets are set to “public” and not “private.”
Here’s about what I must have looked like walking into the guest bathroom at 5:30 AM on that fateful Saturday morning:
Please read through all the rules before entering. Good luck!
*OWTK is a Clorox® CLXChampion and has received compensation for this story. All opinions and accounts of the great guest bathroom incident of 2016 are true, unfortunately.
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