“I’ll be exactly 15 minutes, I just have to put my face on!” I exclaimed, racing into my bathroom to finish getting ready, so the impatient one will stop standing by the door tapping his foot and clucking his tongue.

I’m always the last one.

Because I need to play fashion traffic cop with my girls first: You’re skirt’s too short! Your shirt is too small! You have worn that shirt too many times this week! Those shoes are too fancy! Those shoes are not fancy enough! I also need to deal with a soon-to-be fourth grader who is sort of anti-brushing her hair. It’s become somewhat of a thing with her — a thing that’s going to find her in the hairdresser’s chair getting herself one of these.

It rhymes with fob. THE HORROR. I have to find the missing important things, I have to make sure everyone else is getting ready first.

I waltzed into my bathroom and ran into my son, who was standing there, wearing nothing but what the good lord gave him. As he raced to cover his unmentionables, he screamed in horror, “GET OUT!”

And as I shielded my eyes and turned swiftly in the opposite direction I thought…Get out?

Get out???

It’s my bathroom. Attached to my bedroom.

He has himself a perfectly good bathroom — that’s his and hers and hers. (Three’s company toooooooo)

And yet.

They use my bathroom.

They only use my bathroom.

In fact, some of them who will remain nameless will actually come up two floors from the basement to pee on my toilet. And some of them come into my room for middle-of-the-night peeing. Because, apparently, nothing else will do.

They shower in there, take baths in there, brush their hair, curl their hair, iron their hair, use the mirrors in there, and do their business in there.

Well, in a moment that was certainly not my finest as a parent, I went into their bathroom with a giant bucket, gathered up their pharmaceuticals and toiletries, and dumped them on the floor in my bathroom. And then I gathered up my important bathroom-related items — shampoo, razor, makeup, toothbrush, my book etc. and brought them all into their bathroom and pulled out an almost apropos line from Dirty Dancing.

This is your dance space. This is my dance space. I don’t go into yours, you don’t go into mine.

I traded bathrooms with them.

And then I got ready to go to a party in a bathroom that was all my own.

I wasn’t interrupted one single time.

Bliss.