Glossing Over

You know how there are certain objects that are there so often that you just don't see them anymore?

There are these things in our daily lives-- like your speedometer, for instance, that you just see all the time but you never really look at. That's right-- I'm calling you on the fact that you don't look at your speedometer, Speed Racer. I mean, I know my father doesn't look at his. It is, after all, completely covered by at least four Post-It notes at the present moment.

There are lots of objects in our house. We have, to put it mildly, shit everywhere. Sometimes, it's actual shit, emanating from the posterior section of Molly, our young, impetuous, spinchterly-confused dog. However, most of the time, it's metaphorical shit-- papers that pile up on the very desk in front of me that I am too crippled by fear or other obligations (real or imagined) to clean. Tasks tend to get glossed over at times, too-- the laundry or dusting (do people our age "dust" anymore?), or reorganizing the furniture that has been upended by our kitchen floor project.

But you'd be amazed at what human beings can get used to seeing every day. Mold in a bathroom at work-- I've forced myself to get used to that to the point where I didn't even see the ceiling positively growing. Unfortunately, certain things that are ubiquitous in this house that probably shouldn't be, things that I see every day but totally gloss over, should probably be seen and given more attention.

Like, for instance, library books.

As the son of a public librarian (our neighborhood public librarian, to be exact) you might think that I would pay a little closer attention to which library books we have taken out, when we took them out, and when they are due to be returned to the facility that is, quite literally, .3 miles away from our house.

You'd be wrong.

We must have taken out "Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health" (which sounds an awful lot like a book I would have taken out, but it was actually my wife's pick) and some inordinately large book about the Victorians (that sounds more my speed) at least four or five weeks ago. But I'm not sure, because I'm too embarrassed/afraid to check the card. We will no doubt bring these books back, sheepishly, three weeks from now. My wife is using "Typhoid Mary" as lavatory perusing material, and I know this because it sits on the top of our toilet. I see it every time I go to take the piss-- but, do I really see it?

No.

Not really.

It just sort of blends in, with the tissue box that resides under it. Or next to it-- I'm not really sure.