Tuesday’s Wandering Thoughts

It’s a complex world out there. You got to be vigilant. Take care of yourself.

This isn’t about me. This is about women and vaginal infections.

My wife related a Reddit story. A woman had a vaginal infection. She went to the doctor numerous times. Antibiotics were always prescribed. They always failed.

She suspected her underwear and shifted. New materials and styles were tried. Nothing. So she went commando. Nothing.

Sugar was removed from her diet, along with other foods. Nothing.

Her boyfriend didn’t have a rash. The two abstained from sex, in case it was something from him. No change.

Finally, she stumbled onto a Reddit post where thousands of women had reported the same struggle. The answer: toilet paper. She changed brands and the problem disappeared.

Sometimes it’s the most mundane and overlooked aspect of life. The edgier lesson was that in all of these thousands of stories from women, no doctor ever suggested, “Change your toilet paper.”

They just prescribed pills.

The end.

The TP Matter

We’ll discuss (almost) everything at Mom’s house (the off-limit topics are known by all even though they’ve never been discussed). So it was that we talked about toilet paper. Somehow I ended up telling Mom about the toilet paper caddy that hangs on the cistern’s side at my house so we always have another roll available.

“Doesn’t it get wet when you flush?” Mom asked.

“No.” I was puzzled.

She continued, “When you flush, water, particles, and germs go all over the place.”

“I know,” I answered. “Don’t you close the lid before you flush?”

“No,” she replied.

“Anyway,” I asked, “what’s that have to do with the toilet paper getting wet? With all that stuff flying around, I’d be more worried about what’s going into my mouth and nostrils or coating my skin.” I told her about an article I read about flushing toilets a few months ago and the plume effect. (I was researching, and one thing just led to another.) Those researchers concluded,

The particles primarily traveled upward and backward toward the wall behind the toilet, but some also moved chaotically in other directions. Once airborne, some particles traveled up to the ceiling, then spread out along the wall and into the room, the researchers noted.

“Eww.” Mom sat back. “When are you going home?”

I recognized a subject change when I heard one.

The Age

It was the age of toilet paper shortages;

it was the age of puzzle shortages.

It was a time of masks and ventilators,

a time when few had enough,

and some had too much.

It was a time of testing, of being tested,

and waiting to be tested,

and a time to wait for results.

It was the time when nobody could go anywhere,

and everyone wanted to go to work,

a time of confusion, questions, and misinformation,

and a time of heroic sacrifice and hope.

It was a time of worry and a time of concern,

a time to watch, and a time for patience.

It was the time when we lived,

and the time we died.

Dreams of the Times

First, in a response to the current situation, I dreamed that I opened a cupboard in the house and found an opened package of toilet paper. Toiler paper, as you probably know, is one of the most sought commodities in America in the age of the coronavirus. In the dream, I found an opened twelve pack and laughed as I saw it, remembering that we’d had so many rolls of toilet paper that we’d put some in another cupboard. One roll was gone. I told my wife I’d found it and then put it in the proper cupboard, which, in the dream, accurately reflected our current TPSIT. That whole thing amused me; we’d not stocked additional toilet paper. Fascinating how my mind seemed to gloam onto the tp as emblematic of current thinking and trends.

The next dream segment remembered featured me in a car, which is one of my standard dream features (I dream of being in a car, finding a car, or driving a car a great deal). Sometimes in this dream, I was driving, but sometimes I was a passenger. This changed without reasoning that I could discern. It never bothered me in the dream, and I didn’t think about the other drivers. It didn’t seem to matter to me. I was preoccupied with other things, mostly music.

I had a tiny flesh-colored plug in me. It fit into my upper arm by my shoulder, where you’d typically get a vaccine. I could access it through my clothes. Post-dreaming reflection showed that I was completely oblivious to doing this in the dream; it was normal.

The plug had a tiny flesh-colored line, thin as a spider web, attached to it. Removing the plug from my arm, I’d stick it in my ear and hear music. This process absorbed me. After a while, I began understanding that the music was originating somewhere outside of my body. My body was picking it up as if it was an antenna and then playing it in my head.

Then I figured out (with a lot of surprise) that the music that I was attracting and playing was being amplified out to millions of people. As I assimilated this in the dream, I understood that it was part of a position that I’d been given as some sort of keeper. I completely understood it and it made sense in the dream.

I rotated this responsibility with another man. Older than me, he went through the same process of discovering as I’d endured. As he did, I watched him. Seeing his reaction, I guessed what was going through his head and then told him about what I thought it was. He nodded, beginning to understand what I was saying.

That took place in a car. It seemed like an huge car. Dozens of people were in the car with me, but there was so much room, I could easily walk around it, going from window to window or seat to seat. I’d been driving, but now I was somewhere toward the back of the car when we stopped for gas.

When we stopped for gas, we discovered pieces had fallen off the car. I began looking for and finding irregular chunks of metal. Applying them to the car, I started repairing it. I told others what I was doing so they could do it, too. They ignored me, so I worked alone, finding metal and fixing the car.

I ended up going off by myself in another car. I was driving now, taking a small car up a winding mountain highway. Night was falling. Missing a curve, the car crashed through the white guardrail and fell thousands of feet down into a dark bay.

The car hit the water and immediately dropped toward the bottom, passing quickly through fathoms of water. Unfazed by what was happening, even feeling a little amused, I exited the car and swam up through the light grey-green water until I broke the surface.

It was night. The combined events, crashing and swimming, had taken me a long way from where I’d gone off the road. Using searchlights, others were looking for me way over in another area. Bobbing around in the dark water, I waved my arms and called them, but no one saw or heard. Giving that up, I swam a long distance to the shore and left the water.

They were still looking for me. I could see them but they didn’t know where I was. Exasperated and drenched, I began walking along a road toward them. I guesstimated them to be miles away. Accepting that, I increased my pace.

The dream ended.

Lesson Learned

One life lesson I learned long ago is to always check for toilet paper before sitting down to do my business. Of course, sometimes the information is useless, because there is no toilet paper, and no solution for the missing toilet paper.

That’s when you follow your “No Toilet Paper” flow chart to decide what to do.

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