TOILET PAPER FETISH

I must confess, I get antsy when there are only six roles of toilet paper left in the house. I feel more relaxed when there is a good storage supply of toilet paper in the house and I know if there is a storm or a catastrophe and we could be housebound, we are prepared! I am not the only person who has this obsession. I have friends and family who also like to buy toilet paper in bulk and have ample supplies on hand. Maybe we can blame this on genetics and being female?

When the dog was younger, he also had a thing about toilet paper. A roll of toilet paper hanging on a rod was fair game. He would grab the paper hanging on the roll and pull or bite into the roll and leave tooth marks. Who wants to use toilet paper with teeth marks in it? The above photo of the toilet paper hanging on the pretty rod is an 'after picture' of an encounter between the dog, a toilet paper roll on the rod and the wall.

The story goes like this. I was in the kitchen doing the usual stuff you do in the kitchen. The dog came running into the kitchen with the toilet paper roll in his mouth. I thought to myself, how did he get that roll off the rod? The toilet paper roll slides onto the rod. To get it off the rod, he would have had to slide the roll off the rod. The dog is smart but not that smart to slide the toilet paper roll off the rod. I had to go look. What a mistake. To get the toilet paper roll off of the rod, he pulled on the roll. Do you know how many pounds of pressure a dog can apply with his mouth? Some dogs can apply a 1,000 pounds of pressure with a bite. The toilet paper rod was anchored to the wall. So in pulling the toilet paper and thereby pulling on the rod, he pulled the rod with the anchors out of the wall. There was now a hole in the wall. I remained calm and called the DH to come look what HIS dog had done! I was in shock. I was almost paralyzed wondering what we would have to do to repair this wall. I was frustrated. But I knew my DH could fix the wall because I assume most men can. I wondered if I had a 'Marley dog' on our hands.

We now had a renovation project. The job required buying some kind of 'stuff' to fill the hole; sanding and smoothing the wall several times once it was dry; matching a paint chip from the wall to new paint that matched the original sage green colour or was close to the colour; buying trim paint for the doors and baseboards, taping areas in case you were messy with your paint brush; and finally repainting the whole bathroom. All because of one roll of toilet paper.

After this incident, I bet a year went by before a toilet paper roll was placed on any rods in our bathrooms. The rolls were delegated to sitting on top of the toilet tank which was a more safer place. Until next time.......