On Wednesday evenings we put out the recycling in our neighborhood and other than having my green recycling bin stolen twice, I think it is very theraputic to clean out the old crappy magazines that are clogging up the magazine rack in the bathrooms.
For some reason I get like ten magazines a week. Some I ordered as part of a school ‘make the grandparents feel guilty” fund raiser, others were promotional ‘get one year free if you order NOW’, and others I have no idea where they came from but I am guessing my husband filled out one of those annoying little cards that they embed in the magazines. Mostly they are family type magazines filled with recipes and tips like how to look thinner in photographs. (Gonna take a lot more than standing sideways and bending a knee. At least for me.) Some of the magazines are craft magazines, which of course I ordered with all good intentions of becoming the next bohemian artist to show at a SoHo storefront. So that ain’t happenin’ either. I could have learned how to make a footstool in 10 steps or less a project I will never undertake no matter how few steps it takes. The only person I know that uses a footstool is my 82 year old Aunt Joy Mae from Illinois? A few of the magazines are my husband’s, all filled with Vettes, Lamborghinis and Aston Martins….he drives a Chevy Pick up and I have a Dodge….’nuf said. But my favorite magazine of all is my People, a gift subscription from a friend that I recently renewed. I can catch up on all the people that are getting married, breaking up, going to rehab, losing weight, gaining weight, looking good in a swimsuit, need to invest in a beach cover-up, ranted, raved, used the “N” word and crashed their car….and then when the neighbors and I are finished gossiping about each other I like to find out what the celebrities are doing. Hey, look at that….they are getting married, breaking up, going into rehab, losing weight…….
I found a few missing items at the bottom of the magazine rack. An earring that I swore I lost in a pool, which tells me that I was walking around for a few days with only one earring and no one bothered to tell me. I found an old wheat penny, which my husband collects and insists are worth money….yeah 2 cents. Maybe. And the biggest find was the stylus for my Nintendo DS game (and they say I’m not technologically forward, ha). I use the DS to keep my brain from atrophying by playing Brain Age while my legs and feet go numb from sitting on the bowl too long. (too much info, sorry!) The stylus has been missing forever and I had to use my nail to point and click to find out my true Brain Age. The lower the score the younger the brain. When I scored 39 I was happy…now if I get my true age I am thrilled. The brain has gotten old and tired in the wake of the missing stylus. Oh and I found a french fry. Since as far as I know my husband doesn’t snack in the bathroom I assume it was one of my grandsons.
I bundle the magazines with bakery twine and put them in my newspaper recycling bin. I take pride in the fact that the bin is almost half full already and I have two more bathrooms to do. I anticipate the finds at the bottom of those as well.
The bathroom in the basement which used to be my son’s apartment (she wipes a tear from her eye) has mostly year old magazines with naked women sitting on cars, naked women smoking cigars, naked woman wearing sports equipment, naked women in…well you get the idea. I dust them off and leave them there in the hopes that when next my son visits he will stay a bit longer…hopefully not in the bathroom the whole time. Note to self: Grandsons cannot use downstairs bathroom.
The bathroom upstairs, I suppose if it were more conveniently located within my bedroom, would be called the Master Bath. But since it is at the top of the stairs it is simply, the upstairs bathroom. That bathroom had the following: A Beavis and Butthead sticker book….his not mine, no comment. *SAVE* A book on coin collecting, which while I had it out checked out those wheat pennies he neurotically collects. Yup, 2 cents. One particular year, 3 cents. He lied. *SAVE* Union Life magazine….. basically a list of union workers who died that month and how much their widows collected. Seems a little gruesome to print a list like that, but I guess he just keeps checking to see if his name is in there. (when it is, he can stop collecting his god damn pennies.) *TRASH * A People magazine from August 2009 with Kate Gosselin, pre-Dancing With The Stars makeover bitching and moaning about Jon and the media. Hellooo…..the media is the reason you are in my bathroom magazine rack in the first place and without Jon there is no little tribe to exploit, *TRASH* A catalogue for sheds…oh no ain’t going there again. *TRASH* Another catalogue for sheds with things circled. *RIP AND TRASH* Three hard cover books made their way into the rack designed for magazine grade paper….The Life Story of Abbott & Costello, ditto Soupy Sales and TheYankee Years…his, his, mine. *SAVE*, *SAVE* and *SAVE* Two old Law Digest magazines that somehow made their way from the basement to the upstairs bathroom in pristine condition. I am guessing no one is reading them. *TRASH* Another earring appeared, a Spongebob toothbrush, 3 pennies (none wheat), something that resembled a huge dead bug or a petrified prune but turned out to be something made out of plastic that melted into a blob, sixteen rubber bands and my husband's comb which he has been looking for since April.
The bathroom purging complete I tied the remain bundles and deposit them in the green bucket. Sorry fellas, you’ve used up all your relevance and it’s off to the big salvage yard in the sky. But then I realized it was Thursday and missed my recycling day. Guess they will just have to wait in periodical limbo until next Wednesday.
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