The Art of Unagi

Before I officially begin this post, I have to give Ashley over at Stinker Babies credit for teaching me the concept of "unagi".  Click here to read her post, which inspired this one.


According to Ross Geller, of the television show Friends fame, "unagi is not something you are, it's something you have".

Here.  I'll just let Ross explain it a little further:

So how does "unagi" manifest itself in me?

Well, let me give you a little example.

Wednesday night, the Bird and I are the only ones at home, which can make multi-tasking a bit difficult. I simply can't leave Lily unattended for any length of time because there's just no telling what she'll get into.

Yet, even knowing this about my daughter, I still try to do several things at once.  

Because I am a glutton for punishment.    

We finished eating supper and I put Lily in the shower.  I really wanted to get the kitchen cleaned up while she was bathing playing in the water.  I thought this just might actually work for the following reasons: 

• Her bathroom is not that far from the kitchen.
• I can hear her from the kitchen.
• I removed all clean towels from the bathroom shelves so she wouldn't drag them into the water - a lesson I learned the hard way.
• I removed the soap.

Basically, there's nothing in her bathroom now except the toilet, the shower stall and the sink.

I pat myself on the back and head to the kitchen to start loading the dishwasher.  I check on the Bird a few times and she's perfectly content, filling and emptying cups of water from the shower head.

I continue cleaning the kitchen and suddenly, it hits me.  My unagi kicks in.  That state of total awareness.  That sense that something is going on somewhere in the house that should not be.

You know what I'm talking about.  That quiet that's just too quiet.  The quiet that's left after all sound has been sucked from the room.  

Yes.  It was that quiet in the bathroom.

My unagi propels me to immediately drop the cloth I'm wiping the table with and sprint to the bathroom.

Where I am greeted with the knowledge that I did not remove everything from the bathroom like I thought I had.

Nope.

I left the trash can.

Which Lily has pulled into the shower with her.

Thankfully, there was only one thing in it.

Not so thankfully, that one thing was an entire roll of toilet paper that Lily had dunked in the potty earlier and I had rescued before it was completely submerged.

There is toilet paper completely covering the floor of the shower.  Wet, soggy, sticky blobs of toilet paper in piles of all sizes littering the stall.  Even the cardboard roll had disintegrated and started to biodegrade in front of my eyes.

And what is Lily doing?

Sitting in the middle of it all, grinning from ear to ear, picking up piles of the soggy mess, dropping them into the garbage can, adding a little water, and then dumping it all back out again.

And what do I do?

Sigh.  Turn off the water.  Grab a squeegee and start scraping up the mess.  Trying to convince the Bird this isn't a good activity, all while she's looking at me, grabbing my face by the cheeks, kissing me, and trying to tell me without words how much fun she had.

Maybe my unagi is getting a little rusty.

But at least I got a clean trash can out of it.