"Bob's #TEAMLAME" Day 7: Seven

Seven?  Seven WHAT?  I need more information for this prompt!  Where am I going to get seven of something AND tie it to my bathroom remodeling project?

Oh, yeah...

Now, go check out Ziva's Inferno to see who managed to successfully avoid becoming a member of #TEAMLAME today.  I've got work to do.

"Bob's #TEAMLAME" Day 6: Two Birds, One Stone

Okay, it's only Day 6 of the 30 Days of Photographs IV challenge and already I've brought #TEAMLAME down.  I got nuthin'.  Then again, part of being on #TEAMLAME is failing to come through for the team.

*sigh*  

I might as well go do some work in the bathroom.

Until we can install the new vanity and sink, I guess we can always use the plumbing to display our treasures...

Go #TEAMLAME!

"Bob's #TEAMLAME" Day 5: Mushroom

Mushroom, eh?  Talk about a #TEAMLAME prompt...

This 30 Days of Photographs IV challenge is already mushrooming out of control.  But I remain undaunted.  Why?  Because we just took the kidlets to what is affectionately known as "The Mushroom Park" the other day.  Its defining feature is a group of climbing discs on top of poles that look like giant mushrooms.  See what I mean....

These stand on their curved posts anywhere from 1-3 feet off the ground.

Then there's the dark, seamy underbelly of my bathtub, made visible when we gutted the bathroom.

Not only is it mushroom like, it's perfect for my next business venture.  Yeah... that's where I'm going to start my mushroom farm.  Dark, steamy, moist... perfect!  Or maybe I'll just get around to closing the wall up again and have a normal bathroom.

Decisions, decisions...

"Bob's #TEAMLAME" Day 4: Backward

Today's the first day of school, so I'm afraid I was a little busy getting ready yesterday and didn't get a chance to visit everyone and reply to all of your delightful comments about my wad-o-soft-stuff.  I promise... tonight all will be restored to normal.  (Which means I probably won't get to it until Friday.)  But for now, I must soldier on as the newly dubbed "Captain" of #TEAMLAME.  (You weasel, Dufus, abandoning ship like that.)

Today's prompt in Bob's 30 Days of Photographs IV challenge is backward.  All this talk of captains and abandoning ship made me look backward at the summer camp we ran.  One week we were playing pirates and one of our favorite pirate songs was:

When I was one, I'd just begun
Going out to sea.
I jumped aboard a pirate ship
And the captain said to me,

Oh, we'll go this way, that way
Forward, BACKWARD
Over the deep blue sea.

(Once you know the tune, it's a total earwig.)

One of the anonymous kidlets going forward/backward
on the gangplank of our cardboard pirate ship.

I know, I know, you're wondering where the bathroom photo of the day is.  Okay, I'll oblige you.

Here's the forward/backward route I took to get to the toilet the past several days.

1. Step from the doorway into the bathtub.

2.  Traverse the tub and stand up on the edge of the tub.

3.  Turn around BACKWARD and hold on for dear life to the wall.

4.  Gently ease my foot down onto the small, untiled space in front of the toilet.

5.  The next part is self-explanatory.

6.  Reverse the process, stopping to wash hands in bathtub.

Kinda makes you dizzy, doesn't it?

So there you have it... my #TEAMLAME version of today's prompt.  Now, go check out everybody else's art photos for today while I go to the first day of Universal Pre-Kindergarten. (I'm much more comfortable hanging out with people my own mental age.)

"Bob's #TEAMLAME" Day 3: Soft

Here we are on day 3 of the Bob challenge, also known as "30 Days of Photographs IV" and the prompt is "soft".

Soft?  I haven't come across anything soft in weeks, what with all the heavy duty work on the bathroom.  Hard cement, hard lath, hard nails, hard tile, hard floor on my poor knees... everything seems hard these days.  Then I remembered something soft.

This delightfully soft substance:

Mmmm.... yummy!

So light, so airy, so fluffy...  so SOFT!

No, it's not ice cream that I dropped on the newly cemented bathroom floor.  It's tile adhesive. Lovely, soft, tile adhesive...

That sticks to EVERYTHING!  Floor, hands, face, clothes, glasses, walls, pets... and then takes FOREVER to dry beneath the tile so I have to spend three days jumping across the tub to get to the toilet!  (Whereas on my hands, face, clothes and glasses, it dries immediately to a rock-like hardness.)

Grrrrrr!

Even soft things are getting me down these days.

*sigh*

"Bob's #TEAMLAME" Day 2: Illuminate

It's only Day 2 of the "30 Days of Photographs IV" blog challenge, (affectionately known as "Bob",) and Katherine has already thrown down the gauntlet.  She's toying with me, claiming that if I use the bathroom somehow in each prompt, fake Barbie will make an appearance in this challenge.  What a tease!

You remember fake Barbie, don't you?  That sultry plastic vixen who kept appearing in "30 Days of Photographs III"?

http://www.shoot-me-now.com/fake-barbie-suicide/

Yeah, that fake Barbie.

I have a few nails in my bathroom that she could skewer herself on.  

There's nothing like a challenge within a challenge to get your blood boiling flowing.  So here it is... I shall illuminate you with my progress from yesterday.

Before:

After:

So clean!  So shiny!  So luminous!  Luminous-illuminate.  See how I did that?    

Of course, me being me, I only got half of it done.  And it takes 24-72 hours before you can walk on it. Which means to get to the toilet, I have to leap from the hall into the bathtub, then leap again from the bathtub to the small section of floor I have yet to tile in front of the toilet.  Fake Barbie could do it in a flash, I have no doubt.  Me, not so much.  I think I'll be using the scary toilet in the basement for a few days... 

How lame is that?

"Bob's #TeamLame" or "30 Days of Photographs IV": Day 1

Day 1:  Ice Cream

Fool that I am, I agreed to do another "30 Days of Photographs".  Because I'm a glutton for punishment.  Never mind the fact that my bathroom's been torn up for 2 MONTHS now and I don't have time for this.

You don't believe me?  Who has time to take a picture of ice cream when your bathroom looks like this:

So last night, as I was pouring the cement to fill in the gaping hole we created because we decided to move the sink plumbing from the floor to the wall, I was thinking evil thoughts about MikeWJ and Ziva.  Like, maybe I should have been using the cement to make them some new shoes. Lucky for them I missed one small crack in the flooring next to a stud which created a sinkhole that sucked up all the cement. 

Yes, there's far too much work to bother with such frivolity.  But will MikeWJ and Ziva take NO for an answer?

NOOOOO.... I had to freakin' stop to take a photo of ice cream.  

There.  Are you happy now?

At least I was smart enough to join Dufus and Meleah as a charter member of #teamlame.  So I have an excuse for the pitiful photos you're about to see in the next 30 days.

Don't judge!

The Continuing Saga of the Crap Shack Bathroom Renovation

Well, it's been more than 6 weeks since we began demolition and we still don't have a complete bathroom.  Then again, when you're working full time and doing all the reno work yourself, it takes a little longer than if, (like Margo Leadbetter,) you pay some "little man" lots of money to come in and do the work for you.  

As for the status of the Kohler Memoirs Stately Comfort Height 2-piece 1.28 GPF Round Toilet in White... it took FIVE orders to finally get all the parts to our home with each component in only one piece.  

I thought everything was hunky dory when they shipped the lid to the tank that had been smashed in the third order.  A few days later I was looking at it and realized, they sent the wrong lid!  

Why me?  

Home Depot sheepishly sent me the correct one and I made no offer to return the wrong one.  So at least now I have a spare lid in case anything happens to the correct one before I'm dead. 

I took a break to go camping and then came home to complete the tiling of the shower.  It's gorgeous!

What a joy to be able to shower without the tiles falling on your feet.

Moving right along.  

A few days after I received the correct toilet lid, the vanity I ordered online arrived and behold, it had... 

wait for it... 

a crack in the top!  

Time to smash something, or someone.  After consideration, I figured it was better to choose smashing something.  I took my little sledge hammer and smashed the crap out of the bathroom floor to expose the plumbing for the sink.  (Yes, Dufus, I have a sledge hammer as well as an axe.)

Ah... so satisfying.

Then I smashed the crap out of my hand while trying to pry up the black and white tile to prepare for the new ceramic tile floor.  

*sigh*

A She-Woman's work is never done.

* * * * * * * * * *

Enter Mike WJ and Ziva, who are going to distract me even more with another "30 Days of Photographs" challenge in September.  This bathroom may never be completed.  Just sayin'. 

Not So Stately Comfort...

After 27 years of living with a stupid bathroom, Vlad and I finally decided to bite the bullet and remodel.  And when I say "stupid", I'm being kind.

Our bathroom is 5 1/2 feet x 7 1/2 feet...

(Not exactly a "family size" bathroom.)

We have an airplane-sized triangular yellow sink with the faucet on the side... 

 (Note rust stains and sparkly 1960's vintage Formica top as well.)

There is a heat vent in the middle of our shower so the air hits you at waist level while showering.  

(This is after we tore off the tiles.  At least they didn't put that light switch in the shower as well.)

Seriously, you've never seen such idiocy.  Then there's the perpetually leaking shower handles, the medicine cabinet that is placed in the middle of the wall, nowhere near the sink, the short 54" yellow bathtub and the yellow toilet that never looks clean.  What were they thinking?

Of course, what you're probably thinking is, "My god!  How did that woman live with that pathetic bathroom for so long!"

Because remodeling is expensive, not to mention a pain in the ass!  But finally Vlad and I couldn't take it any longer and decided we could do it ourselves.  (Quite frankly, it would be hard to make it look worse!)

So, we began destructo work on the Fourth of July.  One of the first things I did was to order a Kohler Memoirs Stately Comfort Height 2-piece, 1.28 GPF Round Toilet in White.  Because I'm a classy, stately kind of woman.  It's beautiful!  Or at least it was online.

The excitement was building as we ripped tile, drywall and lath off the walls.  Then our toilet arrived on our doorstep.  In a box marked FRAGILE in big letters.  Laying on it's side.  With big dents in the side of the box.

Yes, the toilet was in more than 2 pieces.

So I packed it into my car and took it to the Home Depot, where they inspected it, said, "Yes, it's broken," refunded my money and ordered a new one for me at a 10% discount.  Score!  I wasn't ready for it anyway, so after the initial disappointment, it was all good.  This time I had it delivered to the store for good measure.

I went online a few days ago to check up on things and learned my second new Kohler Memoirs Stately Comfort Height 2-piece 1.28 GPF Round Toilet in White had arrived at the store!  Oh, goody!  Vlad and I could pick it up this weekend.

Then I woke up this morning and there, sitting in my "in box", was an email from Annette K. Plumb (a name that fits) from Home Depot.  She was apologizing for the fact that the second toilet had arrived at the store damaged and that they were canceling my order and refunding my money.

I don't want to cancel the order!  I want my Kohler Memoirs Stately Comfort Height 2-piece 1.28 GPF Round Toilet in White!  (In no more than 2 pieces!)

*sigh*

Maybe I'm just not meant to have a Stately toilet.

But, I'm nothing if not a glutton for punishment.  So after a lovely chat with a young woman named Stephanie at the Home Depot Customer Service Center, (during which I'm sure I sounded most pitiful,) I'm now getting a third Kohler Memoirs Stately Comfort Height 2-piece 1.28 GPF Round Toilet in White for 15% off.

Let's hope I don't have to go to 20%!  I'll let you know how things turn out.

"I Like It When You Hold My Buddy!"

It's been a while since I've written anything.  Most people probably think I've either died or finally been sent away to the home.  In actuality, I've been plagued with "end of year syndrome"... a common ailment of teachers everywhere.  

The chaos of paperwork, field trips, and the mounting anxiety of children as they realize they're leaving the comfort of the nest they've known since birth and heading off to Kindergarten in the fall, is not conducive to blog writing.  However, amidst the chaos also comes fodder for blogs.

One of my favorites in the "goofy things kids say" category, comes from our classroom birthday cards.  We make a giant-sized card and have each child tell something they enjoy doing with the celebrant.  You usually get comments such as:

"I like playing in the block area with you."

"I like playing super heroes with you."

"I want you to come to my house for a sleepover."  

One of my favorites this year was, "I love you with all my heart."  (A standard from one little girl, who then went on to add what she enjoyed doing with each friend.)

As scribes, we write down exactly what the children say and trust me, when we read their contributions aloud during the "birthday meeting", they let us know in no uncertain terms whether we have recorded their thoughts correctly.

So when one little boy asked me to write, "I like when you hold my buddy," it gave me pause.  Do I burst out laughing or call OCFS?  Yes, sometimes my mind goes straight to the gutter, (although in all fairness, we're trained to watch out for this kind of thing.)  A little "you show me yours and I'll show you mine" is a natural progression of little kids exploring their world at this age and is not cause for alarm.  However, we also teach children about personal space and respecting their own and others' bodies.  

It took me a few days before I finally figured it out.  When we are ready to line up to go outside we ask the children to "find a buddy".  They choose a friend and hold hands on the way to the playground.  

Yes, I could breathe a sigh of relief.  He simply meant that he likes holding his friend's hand on the way to the playground.  

You'd think that after 30 years of doing this, I'd have heard it all.  But, no... that's what keeps me coming back.  As for the saying, "Out of the mouths of babes comes wisdom?"  It's definitely true.  It just takes me a little while to figure it out sometimes!