To wash or not to wash

Just what I need to admit, Cheryl will be so proud, every man, woman and child will be impressed,

I didn’t take a shower today.

No, I’m not playing semantics. I didn’t take a bath either. I didn’t swab down with wet wipes. I didn’t take a sponge bath. I didn’t take a spit bath, a la the common house cat. I did nothing whatsoever to improve my outward cleanliness in the last twenty-four hours. Emerging from the house late in the afternoon, someone might have asked me if I was using hair-gel. “Why no, that’s just the way it looks when I don’t wash it.”

The beauty of this arrangement is that hygiene planets are aligned for a very dirty run. My sinuses are not getting along right now. When they’re not happy I have no sense of smell. When I have no sense of smell, I have no personal investment in the “wash/don’t wash” debate. Further, Cheryl and I are operating on separate shifts; part of our second child savvy approach to a full night’s sleep, despite a newborn under the roof. When there are no adult senses of smell in the room, does a dirty man’s body produce a smell?

Now it’s just a matter whether my time is valuable enough to spend it in the shower. To borrow a query from management types everywhere, “What is the value added?”