I head to Seattle once a month for a client meeting, which works out perfectly because I get to stay with my sister and hang out at her house. On a recent trip, I arrived one day after my mom’s departure, an unfortunate case of bad timing and busy schedules made it impossible to sync up our visits.
Now here’s the thing, my mom loves her purple pens and her post-its. If you have any reason to interact with my mom on any level, no matter how obscure, you’re going to get a post-it informing you of something. Got a package to deliver? You’ll find a post-it telling you to leave it at the door. Wondering if the dishes in the dishwasher are clean? The post-it knows all. Walk into her kitchen and you’ll find post-its. Go to her office…post-its. Walk into the laundry room…post-its. Seriously, if my family were smart, we’d all buy stock in post-its. And purple pens.
So it came as no surprise to find a post-it waiting for me in my sister’s guest bath: “Toilet not flushing properly! ☹” I don’t know if it was the thought of my mom writing a post-it about a toilet that I found so funny, or if it was the sad smiley face, but I laughed out loud–—until I realized I had to go to the bathroom. I’ll be honest, I used that toilet with some serious trepidation for the rest of my visit. And it got me thinking about how a toilet is sort of like life. No matter how smoothly things run 99.9% of the time in our day-to-day lives, the unavoidable truth is that are inevitable moments when the shit just keeps swirling around and won’t flush down.
