So.
I arrived home last Friday afternoon to see that the pool guy had parked in my driveway in front of where I usually park my car. This was minimally annoying but I decided to park in Scotto’s space instead and let him figure it out.
What was more aggravating, was that Friday afternoon is a rare and treasured time of aloneness for me. Scotto is still at work and daughter, Lulu is usually serving éclairs at the donut shop where she works part time.
This aquatic infiltrator had disturbed my Friday afternoon equilibrium.
I made a coffee in the kitchen, trying to ignore his presence even though I knew he could see me through the back window.
Should I go and say hello? I wondered. It’s not like I’m Marie Antoinette and he’s the groundsman or whatever.
Eventually, I meandered out the back pretending to water the dead Bonsai Ficus plant Scotto bought me last Christmas.
“So… everything alright?” I fiddled with the shrivelled leaves on the Ficus.
“There’s something wrong with ye filter,” he growled in his Celtic brogue, twiddling his moustache.
I just made that part up he didn’t really have an accent or a moustache, but he’s a POOL CLEANER, get it?
Anyway, he fiddled with that filter for about a fudging hour and I spent a considerable amount of time working out which dog we’d be forced to sell to compensate for the thousand dollar pool filter expense that was sure to eventuate.
Finally, he rapped on our back glass door and I found him shuffling sheepishly, hiding something behind his back.
“I found this mangled inside ye filter,” he winced, holding up my daughter’s teeny, weeny bikini top.
I doubt he would even suspect it was my bikini top. Surely not?
Because that would be excruciatingly embarrassing for both of us.
I haven’t worn a bikini since girls delivered hamburgers at the drive-in, on roller skates.
It was my eighteen year old daughter, Lulu’s bikini top. But because of her sloppy attitude towards putting clothes away, now the pool guy thinks I go skinny dipping.
I told this story to Lulu as I held up the bikini top above my head in reprimand. “This could have cost us a lot of money!” I admonished.
“It looks gross, throw it out.” she scowled.
The very next day Lulu wafted into Poinker central, our bedroom.
“Do you guys have any masking tape?”
I thought she was, perhaps, manufacturing a university assignment prop or something.
“What do you need masking tape for?” I asked pleasantly, admiring the white chiffon playsuit she was currently sporting on her person.
“Nipple pasties.”
Scotto swiftly scurried away to his computer-filled, nerdy, safe room, with his hands covering his ears.
“You can’t put masking tape over your nipples,” I advised sagely. “It’ll hurt too much when you take it off.”
She looked at me as if I were Elephant Woman.
“What? You think I have hairy nipples or something, mother? Who has hairy nipples?”
“No one,” I replied, fossicking around in my drawer for the masking tape and glancing down my cleavage when I thought she wasn’t looking.
There are things that’ll happen to their bodies that these teenage girls don’t know.
If I put masking tape on my nipples now, they’d end up embarrassingly stuck to my belly button.
What fashion shortcuts do you take? Any tips?