We’ve collected numerous bars of elegant soap over the years, all destined for future use. You know how it is: you spend a night in a chic hotel, you take home the soap. We’ve visited a few chic hotels in our days; we’ve snitched some pretty elegant soap.
The snitched soap resided in our linen closet, which we cleaned out a week ago. Almost everything in the closet is destined for the tag sale, but a few things – like three, exceptional bars of snitched soap – were packed away and hauled to our storage unit for another day.
Naturally, we’re now running out of soap. We’re running out of a lot of things – peanut butter, strapping tape, even Advil – and they won’t be replaced. We will remain in this apartment for less than a week. Does one buy a bar of soap, a jar of Adams’ crunchy, or a bottle of Advil when only six days remain?
It’s a bit like living on death row.
Meanwhile, we consecrate the remaining sliver of soap in the shower as if it’s a sacrament of Holy Communion. Life is no longer a sudsy soak, it’s a surreptitious splash. As we say each time either of us heads for the bathroom: “Don’t drop the Dove!”
I travel a lot for work, so I know the soap thing. A few places I go have fantastic soap. But the saving it for later, I do not get. Mayve 20 years of contemplating impermanence have left me feeling that we should use the good soap now. I don’t even mean tomorrow, I mean we should get in the shower and lather up to our heart’s content. Tomorrow is a risky prospect in my book. If you live like this, tomorrow is a a real treat when it becomes today.
Packing soap away for another day feels like a set up for pre-mediatated disappointment… or am I just a total hedonist? Soap now, wine now, poetry now. Haha. What do we save for later? Taxes and shovelling snow.
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Doncha just LOVE this? “Lather up to our heart’s content.” If ever there was a life lesson, that’s gotta be it. Thanks, Lekshe!
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I hear ya, Lekshe.And so toadly agree. But Lest we be dropped from the International Hedonist League, I must protest that unused soap in the closet was simply WAITING to be used while some other sinfully rich soap was in use. For example, our big, dense, olive oil soap bar from the market in Ceret,, France, took an entire eight months to use up. Meanwhile, almonds and lavenders and oatmeals were just waiting….
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Tom we’ve moved more times than I care to count, and other than always being a pain in the neck, there is one other constant. When it comes down to the last minute, it’s amazing the odds-n-ends that are still sitting around loose. There are a dozen reasons that these things haven’t been packed, but it’s amazing that there is always a pile of last minute stuff. In fact, we always have about 3 boxes specifically labeled “Last Minute.” I’m not making this up. I’m not sure how helpful these boxes are, but it gets the stuff out of sight, and you know, “out of sight, out of mind.” That’s half the battle in any move. BTW, good luck on the tag sale. ~James
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James,you are a genius.
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