Ah, gentle reader. The bath toys.
It was 2013 when 2013 when I lamented that my children would grow up and not want Mr. Bubble baths and their bath toys:
I’ve already gamed it out: the older boy will one day decide Mr. Bubble is for babies, much like he decided at one point that Sesame Street is for babies, and that will be that. Perhaps the younger will hold out hope for another dash of the Mr. Bubble at some point, but he’ll follow his older brother’s lead, and he’ll stop asking for toys in the bathtub and for bubbles.
Eventually, the toys will get cleaned up and donated to a church sale or some such collection, but the last bottle of Mr. Bubble will just migrate to the rear of the cabinet. Periodically, I’ll clean and rearrange the contents of the cabinet, but I won’t want to dispose of half a bottle of Mr. Bubble. Eventually, I’ll say I’m saving it for the grandchildren, but I’ll not really know if I’m to have my line continue or if I’ll live to see it.
I mentioned in 2021 that the toys were gone:
I know, gentle reader, I suffer more last times for everything than actually occur (for example, the bottle of Mr. Bubble mentioned in The Future Forgotten Bottle of Mr. Bubble actually got used up, another secured, and that one used up, so there is currently no half-empty bottle of Mr. Bubble to be forgotten, but the bath toys are long gone now).
Ah, but as I noted in 2024:
But in 2013, when writing about The Future Forgotten Half-Empty Bottle of Mr. Bubble, I mentioned their bath toys, and in 2021, I said the bath toys were long gone, but I must have meant that their playing with bath toys was long gone, as the bath toys are still in the bin under the sink in the hall bath.
No more.
In this, the year of our lord 2026, I have taken the bin out, discarded the sponges, and bleach-washed the toys for actual donation.
The impetus of this drastic action: I needed the bin. My oldest, a man now (albeit a young one), has a collection of grooming products with which he clutters the vanity in the hall bath. As part of my cleaning this weekend, I wanted to put those things in the bin and under the sink. So I finally dealt with the bath toys.
In 2024, I also mentioned old videos:
But as I am who I am, I accumulated a bunch of videocassettes and whatnot for my children. Actually, I bought a bunch before we even thought of having children when I was doing the Ebay thing around the turn of the century.
So I have a bit of a conundrum now: What to do with the portion of the Nogglestead video library (and book library) which is geared toward children? So I box them up and store them for eventual grandchildren? Try to sell them (who watches old videocassettes these days except me?).
Ah, you know, sometime in December, I culled the video library of a number of these titles. But I left them on the floor by the video shelves, obscured by the unused weight bench in our family room, and it was also only this weekend where I put them in a box and put them onto the table downstairs because I expected my beautiful wife might want to pick through them. Mr. Popper’s Penguins with Jim Carrey. Which I didn’t watch with the boys even when the youngest was in his penguins phase. I think I have the G.I.Joe complete cartoon series box set in it; I might have to pull that one out. But it will likely remain on the table for weeks if we don’t need the table for something else in the meantime.
But these two things do underline the slow pace of change at Nogglestead. Which is to say nothing changes, and that leads to some weird sense-of-time dilation in my own head for sure.
Perhaps part of my get away from the damned desk theme for the year should be to make some changes around Nogglestead. Maybe finally paint the shed red as I’ve hoped to for some time. Maybe clean the garage, which is an effort I started last year and got away from.
I’m actually writing a poem on this theme. Well, I started a poem on this theme. But I’ve set it aside as I have finished the first part of the two- or three-part poem and will pick it up again when I get a good feeling for the turn in it. Or, given my recent (as in, within the last sixteen years) history, maybe never.
