True, Thrifty Love

Do you remember how the bathroom looked before it was remodeled?  This is how it now looks.

Of course, I swept up that little pile of stuff on the floor before the Super Bowl party started.  I also told my guests that leaving the bathroom and announcing “The toilet leaks!” was justification for the use of deadly force.

I get to go to the dentist today! Saturday morning I was munching on some pasta salad when my lower crown popped off. Pasta salad. It was cooked and everything. It just popped right off my molar (or whatever is left of it). Go figure. I’m hoping that the dentist can reset this thing, because this is my favorite crown. It is the most comfortable crown of the three that I’ve had. I only have two crowns, but one had to be replaced. I told General Mayhem to make sure that if anything ever happened to me (i.e. I die) that he should make sure to get the crowns off my teeth. They’re gold. He might as well. If he doesn’t, an undertaker will. The General adamantly refused. The Boss was much more understanding.

“Oh, don’t you worry,” she assured me. “I paid for them. I’ll get ‘em out!”

I can just see my dead carcass on the sidewalk with the Boss leaning over me, one foot on my forehead and a pair of pliers stuffed in my mouth, calling out, “Does anyone have a flashlight?”  At my funeral the guests will be asking, "Does that say Nike on his forehead?" 

That’s true, thrifty love.

Sometimes Toilets And Cracks Do NOT Belong Together

If 2009 was the year of the coon hound, 2010 will be the year of the toilet. This past week has been one long, stress filled, plumbing catastrophe that involved seating and reseating and reseating the new toilet in our freshly remodeled basement bathroom only to find water leaking from underneath the front edge. I’ve tried every toilet leak stopping product known to mankind only to find water on the floor after reseating the toilet. Eight times. No sooner would I get the bowl installed and the water turned on when I would see water start to creep out from underneath the front edge of the bowl in the powder room version of the Chinese water torture. Water boarding is child’s play. If you want to get information out of a terror suspect then have them install a toilet in my house. The plumber that I called after reaching the limits of my privy potential left shaking his head, convinced that the problem wasn’t with anything he or I did but with the toilet itself. Sure enough, a careful inspection of the toilet revealed a crack in the porcelain on the bottom of the bowl. It didn’t matter what I tried. This plumbing job was doomed.

Of course, there was no pressure on this week long job. The Boss really didn’t care what I did as long as the toilet was fixed before the crowd of people arrives on Sunday for the Super Bowl. Each day passed and nothing worked and the Super Bowl loomed closer and closer and I still have to install the sink and hang the mirror and the towel rack and the toilet paper holder. Hanging the toilet paper holder any sooner would have just been too darn optimistic for this project. That’s on my to-do list for tomorrow.

Oh, and do you remember that basement room remodeling project that I started last month? It was the one I intended to have completed before the Super Bowl. It was the only one I intended to have completed before the Super Bowl because it was the only project I intended on starting. That one? Yeah, well, I applied the final coat of paint last night, so we get to put that room back together today.

Now, the store from which I purchased the toilet willingly took it as a return and gave me back my money. As for the plumber’s charges, I’ll have to take that up with corporate. We were able to purchase another toilet by a different manufacturer. The really nice old lady who absolutely did not comprehend the flushing the kids down the toilet joke willingly unpacked the toilet in the store so that we all could inspect it for cracks. This was one of those rare times when cracks and toilets did not belong together. It passed inspection, and now that toilet resides in my basement bathroom, secured to the floor by two bolts and a wax ring. It went in quickly. It doesn’t leak. And I am afraid to walk into that room and look at it, much less use it, for fear of seeing that telltale seep of water drip dripping on my chamber pot floor. Am I a plumber? Nevermore!

All of this came about after I lost the fight as to whether or not I pulled the old toilet in order to lay the new floor in the bathroom. I lost that fight because I have a good marriage. I would have put the old toilet back in place except that I managed to drop a chunk of steel through the tank lid. Steel is not a good playmate for porcelain. During this entire project I’ve been feeling enormous stress because I felt like I was letting down my wife and she was feeling badly about the situation because she pushed so hard for me to remove the darn thing to begin with. The silver lining to this week, besides a working can, is that we held hands and laughed and joked and enjoyed each other’s company as we returned one toilet and inspected and purchased another. That’s because we have a good marriage, too. And to think that I only have two more bathrooms to remodel.

2010.

The year of the toilet.

You Pick The Caption

"Kajamas"

 A Princess Dress

 A Santa Hat

 A Stick Horse

You write the caption!

A Rare Post on Homeschooling on a Homeschooling Blog

Last Christmas Santa left a cool package underneath the tree. It is a game called “Sequence States and Capitals.”

It is a fun and simple game. Each payer is given seven cards. Each card has a picture of a state with its capital city marked on it and the name of the capital city printed over it. There are also "ADD' cards and "REMOVE" cards which, ironically, allow a player to add or remove playing pieces from the board. 

The board has pictures of all fifty states with the state names printed over it. The rules are fairly simple. “Beginning with the player to the left of the dealer and moving in a clockwise direction, each player selects a card of their choice from their hand and places it face up on a discard pile (players should start their own discard pile in front of them visible to all other players) and then places one of their marker chips on a space on the game board that has the same state shape and color as the card played. Each card is pictured twice on the game board. A player can play on either one of the card spaces as long as it is not already covered by another marker chip.” The goal is to make two sequences. A sequence is “a connected series of five of the same colored chip either up or down, across or diagonally on the playing surface.”

We love this game! Major Havoc and I play one game each day as part of his school work. Yesterday, I saw him point to a magnetic map of the United States on the refrigerator and excitedly announce, “Hey, dad, look! It’s Helena. Montana!” He’s not only learning all of his states and all of their capital cities, but he’s practicing his reading skills as he reads aloud the state and its capital with each turn.   He's having fun and doesn't appear to realize that he is learning.  That's very cool.

This example of educational excellence comes without a tax increase for education, a pay raise for the teacher, an increase in costs for my health insurance, reading Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, or signing up my students to be members of President Obama's "Organizing for America" program as is being done in Ohio public schools. 

(Great post, Opus #6)

For Style and Function, It's a 10!

Who knew buying a toilet could be so complicated? There are “flushability”(my new word) ratings on all the new commodes. I had to ask a store associate to explain to me the difference between a “4” and an “8” and a “10.” The associate looked to be in her late 50’s to early 60’s, and neatly coifed for her afternoon in the plumbing department. She explained that the higher the number the better the stool. A “10” was the highest. I noticed that the ratings were in even numbers only, so anyone looking for lucky number “7” on their new toilet was out of luck.

Considering the job that we were asking this device to do with barely a gallon and a half of water (thank you, Congress) we decided to splurge on a “10.”

“Oh, you’ll be very happy with this toilet,” the associate assured us. “It has a strong flush. It won’t clog. You won’t need to flush twice. And it’s good with kids.”

“Flushes them through in one try, too, eh?” I asked her.

The Boss immediately started laughing. It was contagious. I started laughing too.

“Oh yes, definitely,” nodded the associate, in her most knowledgeable voice.

I don’t think she ever heard what I asked, but the kids did.

I think they're nervous.

P.S. From http://www.dictionary.com/

stool (stōōl)


n.

A backless and armless single seat supported on legs or a pedestal.

A low bench or support for the feet or knees in sitting or kneeling, as a footrest.

A toilet seat; a commode.

Fecal matter from a single bowel movement (2's or 10's, Kathleen).