Tag Archives: Marriage

I dislike soap slivers.  It just isn’t handy to wash with a piece of soap that is almost done, but not quite.  But it also grinds my gears to throw away perfectly good pieces of soap when I know that if they were collected together, you would have the equivalent of a nice new piece.  Over the years, I’ve dealt with this in various ways.  I’ve had those hand-crocheted bags that are supposed to collect them and somehow meld them into one nice large piece.  That didn’t work for me somehow.  It probably wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own, but I just didn’t like how it was working.  Most of the time, I try to stick the small piece on top of the larger one and intentionally squish them together until they are imperceptibly joined.  This has enjoyed fairly good success, depending on location.

We are not shower gel or body wash kind of people.  That is, Certain Man and myself.  It just makes the shower too slippery for any kind of safety.  Also,  when we had our knees replaced, the doctor told us that the best soap for bathing/showering was Safeguard.  So almost six years ago, we began using Safeguard exclusively for the master bathroom, and it has been very satisfactory.

I had used expensive body wash for Cecilia, always getting the high moisture kind to keep her skin supple and and moisturized.  A few months ago, she was standing on the bath mat while I was showering her, and proceeded to lean back against the wall.  “Whoosh!”  Out from under her slid the mat and down she went.  The abrasions were impressive.  She didn’t break anything, but she surely did huff and puff indignantly at me.  I was really puzzled.  It was the kind of mat with suction cups under it, and should have stayed put.  When I checked things out, I realized that there was a sort of slippery film under the mat and it was just as slick as all get out.  I immediately took up the mat, and got those stick-on things that give good grip, and stuck them on that floor in a geometric pattern.  And I got rid of that slippery Dove Extra Moisture Body Wash.

I started using that good old Safeguard soap and it wasn’t so bad.  In fact, I began to notice an interesting development.  Cecilia had a significant blackhead right in the middle of her back.  It had resisted all ministrations intended for removal.  It only seemed to grow bigger and bigger.  When I started using Safeguard soap for her shower, that ugly, black pockmark on her back started to shrink.  Yepper.  Just like that!  Until it almost isn’t even there.  I like that!  But I digress.

However, now that Cecilia is also using bar soap, and Daniel, and I, as well, the slivers just seem to add up.  So I’ve been working on trying to combine the slivers into a soap that I can at least use in the sink.  Every now and then, I will notice that the one in the shower is miniscule enough that it will almost not stay in my hand, so I will take the sliver out and replace it with a nice, new cake of soap.  And when Cecilia’s is too small for my liking, I will haul the remnants up to my our bathroom and attempt to join it with the others. I tried for a while to just stick it on the top of the new bar.  In fact, I worked hard at getting it to stay.  I usually thought that I was pretty successful but almost always, I would come to the shower to discover that it was no longer attached.  I gave up on that one and decided to just use the slivers at the sink where I could do a better job of keeping things together.

For the past week or so, I’ve had pretty good success with three slivers, working at getting them to stay together, but then I noticed that the one in the shower was needing replaced, so I grabbed it the other morning, soaked it until it was just a little bit squishy, and stuck it tightly on to the other three.  Success!  I had a very tight fit, and I now had four slivers that almost were equal to a full bar.

But last night, I was brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed and I looked down at my soap dish and was dismayed to see this:

“I can’t figure this out,” I said to my long suffering spouse.  “I keep trying to stick these things together and they keep coming apart.  I hate to throw away soap slivers, when I can use them, but they just don’t stay together!”

He came to peer over my shoulder at the offending soap.

“I know,” he said, without a trace of remorse.  “I keep prying them apart!  I hate how soap is when it is all stuck together like that.”

“But why???”

“Because it doesn’t fit in your hand right, and it just isn’t right.  I’d a thousand times rather have a little piece of soap than a great big one.”

“But Daniel, these are too small to really work right in the shower.  I just thought I would stick them together and that way the little pieces wouldn’t be wasted.  I had just stuck them to the big piece, but that didn’t seem to work so well –”

“I know!  I REALLY hate that.  I would take those off, too!” He paused as if he was thinking about what he just said, and then he amended, “I mean, they would come off when I was using them and that was irritating, too.  I just don’t like it!”

Alrighty then.  The Man has spoken.  I didn’t know.  I will mend my ways.  I think I will still stick small slivers of soap together for use at the sink, but maybe not more than two at a time.  Maybe I can get by with that.

And that is the news from Shady Acres, where I give grateful praise that the disagreements between Certain Man and his Wife are trivial and clean!