My house is home to mysteries. Things happen, or don’t happen, in this house, and there are no logical explanations.

I have a few questions, and if anyone out there knows the answers, I’d sure appreciate it.

1. Why is there always a pile of dirty laundry BESIDE the hamper, instead of inside it?

2. Why can’t my husband, who is a mathematician and electrician and therefore quite handy in many ways, some of them interesting and none of your business, remove the empty toilet paper tube and replace it with a new roll? He always just balances the new roll on top of the empty one, still in the dispenser!

3. Why am I the only person who knows how to fold the dry, clean clothes? Once they’ve been removed from the dryer and thrown into a basket, they’re wrinkled and I have to wash them again. (Well, you didn’t think I was going to IRON them, did you?)

4. Why is a grown man still so fascinated with flushing a toilet? Why would he flush it both before AND after?

5. Why does any person require three or four clean towels for every shower?

6. How is it that a person who has lived in this house for fifteen years still doesn’t know which kitchen drawer the sharp knives are in?

7. I buy about a dozen pairs of scissors every year. Where are they?

8. Why do we keep all those pens with no ink and pencils with no lead by the telephone? Why don’t we throw them away? And who keeps removing the box of little paper squares I put there for messages? (Although, since the pens and pencils don’t write, that’s maybe a moot point.)

9. The spare light bulbs have been in the exact same place ever since we’ve lived in this house. Why am I the only person who knows where that exact same place is?

10. How can a man with hardly any hair, use an entire bottle of shampoo a week?

I’ll stop with ten, because if I keep on, I’ll be here all night.

I’m not actually complaining; don’t get me wrong; I’m just puzzled about these unanswered questions.

Also, my husband is a sweet gentle man, and if he leaves his toenail clippings on the bathroom carpet, I’m sure there are worse habits he could have.

Ah, but would any of those worse habits rip the skin from the bottoms of my feet when I shuffle across the bathroom floor in the middle of the night? I think not.

(Don’t worry; I always vaccuum them up before company comes. So you’re safe to walk across my bathroom floor barefooted. And, please come over and do just that.)

And stay as long as you like.

As long as we have company, he’ll throw his clippings in the wastebasket.

Oh, and just in case you might need one, the sharp knives are in the drawer to the left of the dishwasher. The light bulbs are in the bottom cabinet of the hutch.

The liquor is on top of the refrigerator, so be careful not to slam the door shut, or you’ll get a bottle of wine on top of your head.

Bring ice. We never have any because the same person who does all the other mysterious stuff never refills the trays.

Our ice maker broke two years ago and we’ve never fixed it.

Oh, and if you can’t see the wine up there, move the cereal boxes aside. I hide it behind the Rice Krispies so our mothers won’t see it.

Our mothers know it’s up there; my mother thinks it’s all Hub’s, and his mother thinks it’s all mine.

At our age, who cares. And at their age, they should be sitting down and joining us in a glass or two.

Old people are so weird. And the closer I get to it, the weirder they seem.