I generally aim to smell neutral, if not pleasant. My hygiene since becoming a mother has had its questionable periods, but on average I bathe or shower at least once a day. And except for a few months during and after my cancer experience when I did not use deodorant (or anything else I had demonized irrationally as potential carcinogens), I make sure to put that on before joining the public.

I always have and will wash my hair, which means there is a soap-like product on my body, and over the years I experimented with various body washes as young women are prone to do. The thing is that for some time while growing up I did not use soap, per se. (I hope this admission does not embarrass myself or my parents in any way.) Mostly I use a bar of soap now, but if it isn’t available, I don’t sweat it. I have hot water, friction, face wash, shampoo, and scrub; with these things I feel I can get effectively clean.

On more than one occasion Joel has teased me about my not using soap, how it’s gross, I’m not really clean, har har. It has gotten worse since Zoe began bathing in the tub, grabbing the soap and scarfing as much as she can scarf before we wrangle it away from her. We relocate the soap to the counter when we run her bath water now, and sometimes I forget to bring it back into the shower.

Joel: You gettin’ real clean in there?
Me: Yep.
Joel: Really? All lathered up?
Silence. I’ve been caught. Still, isn’t getting out of the shower, risking a slip and fall or a chill or both, worse?

Anyway we finally ran out of our 14 bricks of soap, and I keep forgetting to buy it at the store. During a marathon go-through-stuff session (featuring item after item of Joel’s past) at his parents’ house this weekend, we were, jokingly I believe, offered a perfectly unused bar of Zest. Joel balked. I wanted to accept it; we are, after all, out of soap. He’s the one who uses the stuff and complains when it’s less than a quarter inch thick! (You know in As Good As It Gets how Jack Nicholson’s character uses a bar of soap one time and then throws it away?)

His nonresourcefulness came up later that night. He balked again, calling the soap “old” and how he “will not use old soap.” Long story short, I got tweeted.

Addendum.