The Case of the Missing NyQuil

2

June 1, 2010 by Writer

It is quite possible that my obsession with keeping stocked up on household essentials, stems from being raised by a woman who was perpetually out of everything.  I’m not talking about running out of Bisquick and now you have to make pancakes from scratch — no, we’re talking about running out of the most essential of essentials.  In fact, one could conclude from the number of times we were out, that my mother bought toilet paper…just once.

We didn’t just run out of toilet paper though, we’d be out of paper towels, napkins, tissue, toothpaste, food — the only thing we always had in the house was brown rice.  My brother and I would complain as most children do, “hey, there’s nothing to eat in this house!” and my mom would always lead us to the “pantry” (a shelf) and point out the brown rice.

It’s taken me 30 years to tolerate brown rice again.

You’d think I’d have caught on to the fact that there was never any toilet paper.  Perhaps I thought if I pretended I had one of those moms who visited the grocery store on a regular basis and bought stuff, someday it would actually be true.

But alas, as I sat there on the toilet, having achieved what I’d sought out to do, we would have the all too familiar conversation yelled through our perspective doors;

Me: “hey, I need some TP!”

My mom: “we’re out!”

Me: “can I get some tissue?”

Mom: “we’re out!”

Me: “how about a napkin?”

Mom: “we’re out!”

Me: “uh, a paper towel?”

Mom: “we’re out!”

Me: “well what the hell am I supposed to wipe my ass with then?”

Mom: “don’t use that language with me!”

Then she’d come in with this old ratty tissue she’d dug up from the bottom of her purse and say “here — just use one ply though, save the other for later”.

To this day, when I go visit her –- she’s out of toilet paper.

I am not kidding.

So it makes perfect sense that I like to stock up, and knowing this about me you can probably imagine how I feel about Costco.  But you don’t.  You can’t imagine how I feel when walk through that gateway to heaven,  flashing my Executive Member card.

Oh, you heard me right…Ex-ec-u-tive Member bitchez!

Early arrival, twenty percent back on all purchases and a free pizza!  Bah-zinga!

Costco is my haven, it’s my happy place.  It’s where I go in my mind when my life sucks.  I dream of huge bags of beautiful white socks, a hundred AAA batteries, a 24 pack of Band-Aids, and a package of toilet paper so huge they have to fork lift it onto my roof racks.  I don’t even mind having to run over people because they’re to stupid and spaced out to move — that is how much I love the place!

I have made a science out of stocking up and I am extremely organized about it.  I have both the counter top FoodSaver, and the compact hand-held FoodSaver with Ziploc vacuum bags so I can purchase massive quantities of meats and cheeses and freeze them in my 17 foot cubic freezer.  I have a pantry and a closet dedicated to household essentials, complete with labeled bins.

This may sound a bit obsessive to you, and it probably is, but it brings a sense of order to my otherwise chaotic life.  Because you see, I live with the Antichrists of orderly.  I can’t walk into my son or daughters room without feeling nauseous and dizzy.  I do everything I can to avoid the garage so I am not reminded that my material possessions live in racks upon racks of unlabeled boxes in no particular arrangement.

Now, my daughter – one of the aforementioned Antichrists of order – pretty much just comes home to do her laundry and to shop.  She thinks that because I have so much extra, and it is my job to support her for the rest of her life after all,  she can just help herself and take it to her boyfriends house.

Normally I don’t really care that much, I mean how many Band-Aids will one family go through in a life time?  I’m sure after a decade or so they must lose a bit of their sticky, right?  But this last weekend was a different story.  My son was sick and said he hadn’t slept well the night before because he was sweating, and coughing, and he wanted something that would help him sleep.  I said “you need a nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, aching, coughing, stuffy-head, fever, so you can rest medicine!” and I jumped up and ran to my “closet of cures”.

I can only begin to explain my horror when I looked upon the “pharmacy” bin and there was no NyQuil.  I had two bottles in there last I looked, one half full, and the other, a brand new bottle….Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

It was at that moment I remembered my daughter telling me her boyfriend was sick and could she take one of the bottles of NyQuil?  I said “sure, take the bottle that’s  half full, but leave the new one”.

So, I texted her asking if she had taken both – cause I knew she had.

Apparently her boyfriend doesn’t like to take medicine that has been open, so she took both bottles and then threw them both away because they had expired…recently.  I said next time he needs some medicine he can go buy his own, or have his mom buy it.

Why the hell do I have to supply him with medicine and glue and tape — I don’t even like the guy!

She said, “Maybe you should have thought about checking if there was NyQuil hours ago when Wes was first sick.  Don’t wait till you can get mad at me for it”.  And then she reminded me that Safeway was open 24 hours, that’s where she had to go at 4:00 am because the NyQuil I gave her had expired.

I replied with something to the effect that I wasn’t going to keep a fucking tally of my medicine cabinet because she thinks I’m a free drug store (which I quickly added to my list of awesome parenting moments) and then explained that medicine doesn’t actually go bad, like milk, when it expires.

Then she asked “well why would it have an expiration date then?”