Why are you reading in the bathroom.

It's 2014 and a lot of mysteries have been solved: the sun's general whereabouts, how worms pee, ice cubes, but there's one thing no one has any idea about and I think it's because we're all too nervous to ask.

Why is everybody keeping so many books next to the toilet?

Books are great, and I like reading as much as the next person. My family has a friend who stores books in her dishwasher because she washes dishes by hand anyway and needs the extra book storage space. Books in the dishwasher is pretty weird, but it makes more sense to me than books in the bathroom. And I see books in bathrooms all the time.

I have three theories:

THEORY 1: EPIC JOURNEY 

I've always assumed that people must be taking so incredibly long to use the bathroom that they need to prepare for it the way they would for a long commute or a journey west or a trip to outer space. 

They're bringing reading material because they're going in not knowing when they're coming back out.

Why they're in there so long I have no idea. Lack of fiber? Too much fiber? Very long digestive tracts? Those have question marks but they're not questions, I don't really want to know the answers.

astronaut suicides by Sara and Neil

THEORY 2: OVERACHIEVERS

I was talking to my mom on the phone a few months ago about people who have it all together, who are going to school while working and keeping plants alive and wearing mascara and she's not into those people. My mom says some people need to learn to take it easy.

"I went to someone's house the other day," she said, "and there was a book in the bathroom. A book in the bathroom how sad is that, even the two minutes it takes you to sit there and go to the bathroom needs to be useful multitasking time you can spend getting a page ahead in your book. Why can't people just take two minutes off from it all and go to the bathroom."

I have a few additional suggestions for people who read in the bathroom because they like multitasking.

• Do squats instead of sitting so that you strengthen your leg muscles
• Check your arms and any other visible skin for unusual moles
• Recite the Greek alphabet twice while you wash your hands
• Also use that hand-washing time to check your teeth in the mirror in case there's salad in them.

THEORY 3: SECRET HIDEOUT

I think sometimes people want to play Candy Crush and Words with Friends and their real-life friends are tired of them being on their phone so they stay in the bathroom forever. Like the guy in This is 40. Maybe that wasn't This is 40. Whatever movie that was.

Actually it was This is 40, here is proof.

He's playing Words with Friends. See that tea light on the back of the toilet? I have so many questions about bathrooms.

Anyway, maybe some people are the same with magazines and finance books? Maybe they're just looking for a quiet place they can read with their pants down because people won't leave them alone.

We'll never know.

My dalmatian tree

I don't know what happened but suddenly I have fifteen plants in my apartment.

Fifteen plants is so many. You would guess that after a handful they would all be the same to me, like people who have more than one child. But you would be so wrong and as soon as you see this picture you'll realize why.

Look at it! It's so beautiful, did you look at it? Scroll up and look at it again.

Now that I look at it again I realize maybe inside the bookcase might be a better place for those books than on top of it.

I wanted a plant like this forever (or at least since October when I wrote that) but they're real expensive and impossible to take care of because they're native to the tropical rain forests of West Africa. They're like having a dalmatian as a pet, which thousands of Americans wanted to do after the movie 101 Dalmatians came out in 1961 so they raced out and bought them before learning that dalmatians are difficult and terrible and hate apartments and then for years there were homeless dalmatians everywhere because people took on more than they could handle because they fell in love with an idea that wasn't going to love them back. I thought this plant was just like that.

But then one day I discovered they are $12 at Ikea. For $12 at Ikea I was willing to risk a dalmatian-level mistake so I went to Ikea and bought it and carried it home on the bus.

I assumed it would die in about a week. Other bloggers who have fiddle leaf fig trees say they had to move them subtly one inch a day to find what sort of light they like best, and that they wrap blankets around the pots on cool days and never stand too close to the window in case they mess up the light. My plant looked like a hot mess after our bus experience. I give it two glasses of water every Saturday morning. That's all I do. I haven't said this word in probably a year, but this situation deserves it: this plant looks rad.

It might be the photo of the cheetah that's helping it stay alive. I try and take tons of showers so the apartment stays humid. Sometimes I worry that the reason it looks fine is it's actually an artificial plant in a pot of real dirt, and that I've been pouring two glasses of water on a large plastic plant every Saturday morning.

I haven't repotted it yet even though I have all the supplies. Repotting it is what I'm really dreading. It reminds me of the feeling I had before I got my ears pierced, and that idea scared me so much I once chickened out at the mall but bought magnetic earrings instead so I wouldn't have to tell my grandmother I had chickened out.

Please don't tell my grandmother I haven't repotted the plant yet.

Some other plants:

One of those five plants is super dead, guess which!

This totally counts as a plant - that's an avocado seed I'm growing in a glass. They take eight years to grow but I'm already two months in.

Please don't be sad if you have a dalmatian as a pet and it's the best pet. I bet your dalmatian is the sweetest and I bet you are also a better pet owner than some people were in 1961.

DALMATIANS by Simon Rich

“Hey, look, the truck’s stopping.”

“Did they take us to the park this time?”

“No—it’s a fire. Another horrible fire.”

You’re welcome, penguins.

Until February my apartment was usually filled with flies. 

I know what you’re thinking: “That seems normal, flies aren’t anything to worry about” but it still always bothered me, sort of a nagging, dark cloud, a cloud of flies that is, hovering slowly around my apartment like a small horrible indoor weather system.

It was the plants that were causing the problem, if you considered it a problem. The flies would just sort of emanate from them. I thought maybe these particular plants grew flies instead of flowers, or that dirt was made from ground-up fly eggs. It seemed possible, I don’t know much about plants. But I still liked having them. I loved having them.

The best way to show plants you love them is to water them at least once a day. Twice a day if you think of it. And the best sort of plants to buy are ones that say they need to be watered once a week or less - those plants are low maintenance. Plants are beautiful and fun but after a few days they always turn brown and soft and then the flies come and the plants get super dead and I know what you’re thinking: How could this possibly be happening. It defies logic.

Then one day in January I accidentally left one of my plants behind a bookcase and forgot it existed. Safely out of reach from my care it transformed into a completely healthy plant, no more flies, green and vibrant and adorable.

So I did a little research, which is my second-favorite thing to do (my favorite thing is to do a lot of research) and found out that my plants not only don’t need the love I was giving them, but due to the humidity of my apartment, need no love at all. The most informative article summarized them as plants that “thrive under neglect.”

Those three words seemed a little harsh. The gardening article was a little too personal. Because looking at the healthy plant refugee made me think of all the other terrifying ways I try to make the world better, and made me wonder if they had failed as conclusively. The middle school girl I mentored, the birthday card someone at work asked me to sign, that blind French man I tried to help in the subway and ended up getting us both lost in a corner because I didn’t know the French word for “turnstile.” And the woman in Namibia I bought a cow for last year. Looking at my plants made me sure things with that cow must have gone horribly.

The list of well-intentioned things I had done during my life was suddenly disconcerting long.

Luckily less than a heartbeat later I had already thought of all the things I neglect every day. Thank goodness I didn’t knit any sweaters for those penguins, or remember to call my former roommate on her birthday. I’ve never played that game where you have to know vocab words to give people rice, and my mom wouldn’t let me be a Girl Scout. How many times had someone posted on Facebook about something where I needed to call a congressperson and tell them something was important to me, and I didn’t call them? That must have happened ten thousand times. 

So now I keep my plants by the window, untouched, unloved, and thriving, healthier than any plants I have ever had, after nine years of plant-ownership. I look at them every morning from a safe distance while I swallow a fistful of vitamins. As long as I don’t have too much of a hand in it, it’s going to be another great day.

These aren’t my plants, but I don’t have a good picture of my plants.

These aren’t my penguins either, but if they're yours I'd like to meet them.

Two plants I don't own but am interested in killing

This is just a warning.

1. LEAF TREE FIG PLANT

That's not it's real name but I don't like its real name so you can click through the photo to find out what it's really called. Look how beautiful it looks in this beautiful sunny expensive apartment and imagine how great it would look in my sometimes-clean not-at-all-expensive apartment! It is native to Western Africa and seems totally easy to take care of.

2. ZZ PLANT

Also not the real name but in this case it is a real, commonly-used abbreviation.

And it also happens to be an off-color slang word in French!

It would look so good for the few days it was alive and as a bonus it is super poisonous.

3. EVERY PLANT I HAVE EVER SEEN.