The Unconventional Toilet Strikes Again

A couple of summers ago - I got invited to go on a boat trip with some good pals, their parents and friends - Zach was working in Vermont unfortunately, so I went solo.

It was as epic a day as you can imagine. We zoomed down the St. Croix River, between Minnesota and Wisconsin. The weather was perfect, the conversation dynamic, the drinks were flowing. There were other boats to wave at. I may or may not have mooned them. Anyway, it was SO FUN.

At some point on a boat, as a woman, the question will always be: "where do I pee?" and usually the answer is, "in the River", but I could NOT resist this strange contraption and decided to use it just because I was probably under the influence of alcohol. 

Bathroom?

WHAT?!?

Anyway, I did my thing and it was just as weird and fun as you would think. Then it came time to flush the toilet. 

Even though you can clearly see in these photos that there are instructions on how to do so - I didn't figure that out. At the time. 

I just kept pumping and pumping that pump thing. But nothing happened. 

And so I LIFTED THE LID to investigate, and then found a different lever to pull. Pulled that lever.

Got splashed. In the face. With my own pee. I screamed like I was in the middle of being murdered and the entire boat of people came running to find out what happened. 

"I have my own pee on my face".

And THEN jumped in the River. The end.

Everybody REEL In

My mom has an old family fishing story starring my Auntie Cheryl.

My mom and Cheryl have five brothers and so anytime they went fishing with their dad there were boys around. And Grandpa Dick is a boy too. So one time Cheryl had to go pee and she refused to use the bucket to pee in and made her dad take her to shore.

"Everybody REEL IN, CHERYL has to go to the BATHROOM!!"

And that's our family quote for anytime you inconvenience others for your convenience.

But that's not the point of my story. 

The point of my story is that I went fishing with my dad and two of his friends the other night and I should have peed before we left the dock because I already had to go. But I didn't. So I suffered and fished for like three hours. Finally I realized I was going to have to pee in the boat and ask three men not to look.

But! We were in my dad's friend's boat! And I didn't even see it but there was a cabin under the deck! With a door that shuts! He let me go in there and pee into his little blue plastic fish rinsing bucket!

And you know how when you have to pee really really bad and so you pee for like 67 seconds and that 67 seconds feels like an eternity? It was one of those. I thought I was going to overflow the bucket - seriously. 

But I didn't. And then I took the walk of shame out of the cabin with my bucket of pee and very carefully and quickly dumped it over the edge and rinsed rinsed rinsed it a million times. I threw the bucket on the floor and resumed fishing.

...and nobody had to reel in.

But I had this to taunt me the rest of the night. The beating of the tell tale pee bucket.

It's lake water!!!! I swear!!!!

The Romper

I feel like the universe really wants me in a romper. They're everywhere. I gotta say, though, I was worried that the idea of it would be so much better than the reality. I'm 39 years old, and I'm not sure they're 'age appropriate'. I decided to go way out of my comfort zone and get one from ASOS. Out of my comfort zone? Am I crazy?! This thing is the most comfortable thing I have placed on my body in a really long time. And, it's cute! I texted the photo below to my boss with the caption: "I HOPE YOU LIKE ROMPERS BECAUSE I WILL BE WEARING THIS UNTIL SEPTEMBER 30TH." 

I call it my 2017 Summer Romper

Versatile!

On a recent trip to my parents' place, there wasn't much to decide in the way of packing:

But that's not the point of my story. The point is that when you go to your parents and basically spend the entire day Saturday and Sunday drinking alcohol (mostly to forget your mom has cancer AGAIN but really just because that's what you do every Saturday and Sunday) and you have all those bathroom breaks --- a romper becomes a somewhat complicated apparatus. I got it down though. I left the straps tied and just shimmied my arms up and out of it to go pee 8.6 million times per day. 

It was at 4am, though, when Rowdy woke me up to be let out of the house that I sleepily untied my romper (YES I SLEEP IN IT TOO) and used the toilet. When I went to retie it, the strap in the back was WET. 

It FELL IN THE TOILET. Determined not to let the romper-toilet-strap incident get me down, I rinsed it, did my best to get the bar soap involved, tied it up and went back to sleep. 

Later that morning, I needed to use the toilet urgently, but my dad was in there (13 people, one bathroom) and so I was forced to use the outhouse, except for the fact that I hadn't yet gotten to  item number clean out the outhouse on my chores list. I opened the door, frantic, only to find 432 spider webs and the world's most giant spider covering the outhouse seat hole. I swiped it with some toilet paper but had no time to clean it properly and so I disrompered and did my thing, naked and standing up. 

Of course I hadn't shut the outhouse door, one because it was too spidery in there and two because I never shut a bathroom door. I looked up at some point to see both my sister Kasey and my Mom waving to me from the kitchen window.

Bathroom Break

My entire career I've been known as the girl who says "I have to go pee", while doing the peepee dance and never going pee. I wait for hours and hours and hours because my office is SO far away from the bathroom and I'm very busy and important. 

I'm kind of afraid that something bad is going to happen to my bladder when I'm older from all that holding it. 

So can somebody tell me then, why: when my home office is literally IN MY BATHROOM (thanks to this 900 square foot 1-person loft I built for myself and not a husband and two teenage stepsons because remember I was going to die alone), I say "I have to go pee", while doing the peepee dance and never go pee. I wait for hours and hours and hours.

WHY??????? 

Does Anybody Want to Explain This to Me?

 

Seriously, how does a person pee on the FRONT of their shoe? In the work bathroom?

 



 

Flooring and The Toilet Tarp

The bathroom used to be located on the north side of the house, but was relocated to the south side. Since the beginning it (one single toilet) has been tarped off -- in the beginning it was winter and so we had to keep the heat in -- remember there was no roof for some time and so only the basement was heated...and later for privacy.

We took to affectionately calling it the Toilet Tarp. It's the only place in the history of the universe and in my life where I gave myself permission to not wash my hands after using the toilet and then immediately eat a slice of pizza. Remodeling!

Here it is in its new location:

And here's the new flooring -- the old stuff didn't quite stretch all the way across the house, but I did want to salvage it if possible -- to save money and to channel my inner Nicole Curtis.

New front and side windows in the front office:

Oh We Have Fun at Work

Tara, my chubby-chair-breaking-friend, complained to me the other day that she lost her favorite purple scarf at work. She couldn't find it anywhere. Had I seen it?

Nope.

Well then I did see it. On top of the fridge. HA!

The obvious joke would be to make fun of her for, you know, staring in the work fridge, hungry as can be, getting sweaty and removing the scarf to throw it on top of the fridge to make room for more food in her mouth.

Instead I private messaged her a photo on Instagram with this caption:

Loving the soft new toilet paper in the 10th floor bathrooms!

What's a Nerdy Girl With a Bad Back to Do?

Why, buy a kneeling chair on Amazon for $79.74 of course! I had it shipped to work but I bought it for my home office. I've been testing it to see what I think. 

It's kind of hard to get used to, because at first it felt like I basically traded low-back pain for incredible shin pain. And then I shifted my weight into my butt more and stuck my knees into the knee pad instead of my shins and that feels way better. It's a great conversation piece. Everybody wants to try it. And, since my cube at work is near the front door everybody teases me on their way to the bathroom.  

They make a mockery of me, Mom! Because this is what they see:

If having good posture is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Of course I came up with a funny comeback way too late. I might try it tomorrow. Here it is: 

"OH YAH? GO PEE WHY DON'T YOU?"

And then when I finally sat down at my home office tonight to write this blog post, and my friend Heather walked by she made a mockery of me again, Mom! Because this is what she saw:

Inception!

And then I said:
"OH YAH? GO PEE WHY DON'T YOU?" to Heather but she didn't get it.

Stress on Vacation

 

Toilets are pretty advanced in Japan, as I've mentioned before. They will sing to you, they will wash your butt, or your front-butt, if you prefer, and sometimes they are a video game and you win if you hit the right targets with enough force.

 

But sometimes they are just downright practical, like the one pictured here. In order to save water and space, I think. The sink is attached and only activates itself when you flush. Which, for the anxious Minnesotan(!) only creates the following stresses:

 

1) hurry!

2) is the water dirty?!

3) hurry!

4) like, is it recycled poop-water?

5) it's attached to the toilet...

6) HURRY!!

 

 

Why is life so hard sometimes?

 

Bed Wetter

So I wasn't a Bed Wetter. (Even though I erroneously admitted to it one time).

But that doesn't mean I never "wet the bed".

Take that time I was 12, for instance. Sleeping over at my friend Maija's cabin. I've explained my relationship with Maija, haven't I? Well, one night we stayed up WAY too late laughing and drinking Mountain Dew.

I woke up somewhere early-morning and realized I had accidentally peed in Maija's bed. At age 12. While Maija was sleeping peacefully in the bed next to me. What would you do in a situation like that? I'll tell you what I did: I froze. I panicked. I lied.

I snuck out of the bed and changed my underwear and pretended to be asleep when she woke up and inquisitively asked what the HUGE, YELLOW wet spot was in between us. I was just as confused as she was. Was it sweat? Maybe...hmmm...it's doesn't smell like sweat...etc etc etc.

We decided to wash the sheets before her mom found out.

I threw my underwear in the machine when she wasn't looking.

The perfect crime.

 

More Like "Blunder Party"

When I was a little kid, I went to a slumber party with my sister Kasey and several other similarly-aged friends. It was so much fun! There were tons of snacks and the mom of the house was a real nice fun lady so the party was a total hit. AND there were tons of activities, including a fun trivia game where you had to pop(!) a balloon and the trivia question was inside and then you had to answer the question. I loved that game because I was a super smart little kid and probably got all of my trivia questions right.

When it was time for bed, the nice fun lady mom had us change into our pajamas. She lined us all up, got our attention and then solemnly asked the group if there was anybody who was still peeing the bed.

Nobody raised their hand. Silence. This made me feel real bad for the nice fun lady mom who was having this party for us and here nobody was showing her any respect by answering her question. I wasn't quite sure why she wanted to know, but that awful silence was killing me. I was ashamed of our group, greedily taking snacks and prizes but then not participating when it mattered most. Even my friend Bedwetter Betty* didn't make a peep.

I raised my hand. Never mind that I hadn't wet the bed for years. I never wet the bed. But I didn't want her to feel bad!

Then, right in front of everybody, she knelt down in front of me and held out a pair of plastic underwear. I dutifully stepped one foot in, and then the other, and then she shimmied them up, on top of my real underwear. I had to sleep in them all night long and they were very sweaty.

 

 

Taking one for the team since 1977.

 

 

 

 

 

*her real name.

 

An Interview With My Sister Kim: Peein' in the Woods Ain't Easy

Kim, tell me, have you ever had to pee in the woods?

Many years ago, I went hunting for deer with my husband, his father and his brother. At one point, I needed to use the bathroom really bad, and planned to take the 3-wheeler from the woods back to the farm and use the outhouse. I was voted down by the guys who insisted they needed me to help with the next deer drive, and they didn’t want to wait for me. I was told to just go in the woods.

How did you feel about that? I mean, what's so hard about peeing in the woods?

I hate going in the woods, because there’s always the danger that the pee will run down my legs and into my pants and boots instead of running nicely in a stream directly to the ground.

Oh, I see. That would be terrible. Well, what did you do?

I finally gave in to the pressure and decided that if I found a good log to sit on, it would keep my stream separate from my pants and boots, and I could make it work. My father-in-law stayed behind, and my brother-in-law took off down the trail to eat his lunch at his 3-wheeler. I waited until he disappeared around the corner of the trail and then headed off into the woods to find a log. I made my husband accompany me.  

Ah yes, the "fallen log" approach. I too have opted for this method. It really can save one from having to squat and thus risk spraying urine all over their pants and boots. How would you describe this method, perhaps to City-Folk who have never heard of it before?

For those who aren’t familiar with the art of log-peeing: It’s important to find a log that’s big enough around to accomplish two purposes. It must keep you high enough above the ground. It must also completely meet the ground so the stream cannot enter your boots on the underside of the log. If you do find a log that meets these specifications, it then becomes very difficult to balance your body, so that there is enough of you on the back side of the log ensuring the pee stream stays on one side while your clothing is clean and dry on the other side. There’s another challenge if one has short legs. I have short legs. When you push several layers of long johns, jeans and wool pants (not to mention a few pairs of long socks) down as far as possible until they meet boots, those layers don’t get very far before they meet resistance. This means that in the winter, if you want to keep your clothes pee-less, far more of your body must be on the back side of the log than would be necessary if the weather were warmer and you were wearing fewer pieces of clothing. This is why I needed my husband.

Oh, I see. I was confused about the necessity of his presence. You know, I made the mistake once of sitting on a fallen log that was hovering a few feet above the ground. Can you comment on why that wouldn't be such a good idea?

What? Are you stupid? You weren't concerned the log would break and fall, taking you with it?

Maybe just continue with your story.

Anyway, I headed off into the woods to find a good log. I walked a ways to make sure I was out of sight. I saw and rejected several logs. Finally, I found a log that passed inspection, and wiggled my several layers down as far as they would go. I sat on the log. I squirmed my way back as far as I could and grasped my husband’s hand so I wouldn’t fall over backwards. At last I relaxed and began to relieve myself, at which point I looked up. To see my brother-in-law, sitting on his 3-wheeler, eating his sandwich, watching.

Privacy Shmivacy

I don't like shutting the bathroom door.

I grew up in a family of eight, and we shared one bathroom. There was no such thing as private time in there. While one kid showered, one kid used the toilet and two kids brushed their teeth and Dad was always lingering in the shadows to make sure the kid on the toilet only used one square of toilet paper.

These days, it's not like I try to pee in front of people, but I don't shut the door. It may be from my childhood, or because I don't want to be left out of the conversation, or sometimes I'm too lazy, but mostly it's because I feel claustrophobic being shut in a small room. My friends and roommates HATE this. 

Especially Summer, who grew up not being able to say the word fart.

Anyway, in my new apartment, there are too many doors for my liking. It's just me in here and there's doors on the office and my bedroom and the bathroom (which is inside of my bedroom). There are doors on my closets. I don't want any of the doors. I hate them. I wanted to take them all off of their hinges but decided I better leave the bedroom door on, in case I have guests and they want privacy. (But why? I don't understand privacy or people who need it. But: I'm a good hostess. And so my guests can shut my bedroom door if they are sleeping over and I give them my room or if they need to use the bathroom.)

I'm just happy I don't have a bathroom door to not shut anymore. Which is exactly how I like it.

Tonight Summer came over. We were talking and she went into the bathroom to use it. I followed her and asked her opinion about something. She goes, "I don't know. I'm BUSY."

I was like, "Oops. Sorry. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! This is so US." And then I left her alone.

We're not THAT close.

Sending A Man to Jail Was Not One of my Goals For 2013...

Things had been festering for a while in India, bubbling and threatening to get really bad for a while. We didn't know how and we didn't know when, but it was coming and we could feel it. This post describes our no-so-happy New Year's Day, 2013. It's long. A man goes to jail. But at the end, there's a gin and tonic and a hot shower.

 

After we finished with Agra and the Taj Mahal, which was just as amazing as you've always dreamed, by the way, we were to take a big train from a nowhere town called Gwalior all the way to Veranasi, which is where the people go to the Ganges River to bathe and set their dead people on fire. Imagine India in your mind's eye. Veranasi is the place you're imagining. But first we had to take a government bus from Agra to Gwalior.

What a weird bus ride. What was supposed to last two hours ended up being five-and-half. Typical India. Nobody on the bus spoke English. Once, during a traffic jam, the bus started going but then stopped again. A little old lady behind us most clearly uttered one English word: "sh*t". We laughed pretty hard.

At one point a white SUV full of men pulled over in front of us and stopped our bus. They got out and then got in a yelling match with our driver. Then they got ON our bus (and by the way it was the kind of bus where there are sixty-five too many people on it) and passed me to approach the driver. I said, "no, no, no, no, no, no" and motioned to get up and get in between the men to try to prevent any violence, but a man sitting in the conductors seat in front of us looked at me and shook his head, like, stay out of it. So I did. The men started punching our driver! And then they yelled some more and got off the bus.

After that we were on edge for sure and so when another truck pulled up and six men approached our bus with clubs in their hands we kind of freaked out. They boarded our bus but didn't beat the driver or any of us. What was that all about? I'll never know. I don't speak Hindi. Shortly after that our bus broke down and we had to get on another one. The new driver said, "WELCOME TO INDIA!" and I was like, yah.

When we finally arrived to Gwalior, it was already 10:30pm and we had missed our train to Veranasi by two hours. We knew we had to spend the night, but walked straight to the train station to ask what to do about leaving for Veranasi the next day. In India the train station is a confusing place. You can't just go buy a ticket. You have to butt in front of six people at a ticket desk and yell your question and then they ignore you and send you somewhere else with a flick of the hand. The ticket counter told us we had to "enquire" at the "enquiry" desk. So we went over there, where another jerk didn't even look at us. Typical India. His feet were on his desk and he faced away from me. Anyway, I finally asked him why he was being so rude. After all it was an enquiry counter and I had an enquiry. I said, "are you on break?" but it did no good. I finally got through to him by saying, "Look. I need help. If I were your sister, what would you tell me to do?" He smiled, miracle of miracles and told me if I were his sister, he wouldn't let me travel without him. And then he said the best thing to do would be to buy tickets for the same train the next night and sent us back to the original counter.

But first, we had to go pee. The train station bathroom was gross. The squatters had mountains of poop in them, and so the only other option was a tile room with a hole in the corner. Like mouse holes in the floor. There was no possible way to pee in the holes. In hindsight I think it was actually a shower. I squatted as low as possible and peed as slowly as I could, but it was dark and there was no lock and I was so concerned about bracing the door against rapists that basically my entire pants, socks and shoes got wet with tiny dots of pee that had splashed up from the tile. I was humiliated. After THAT, I met Summer at the snack counter. I bought my snacks, used my wallet to pay with cash, and put my wallet back in my tote bag. Out of the corner of my eye I saw two young boys noticing my wallet so I resolved to clutch my bag tight.

THEN, we went back to the original ticket counter, who told us to come back the next day because his desk was for was general tickets and the sleeper car tickets were only available at the reservation desk which was closed for the night. AAAAAAAAAH!! I'm explaining these ridiculous details to give an idea of my mindset. I was tired. It was late. I was also shaken up at the beating of the bus driver and afraid that those men with clubs were going to hurt us but they didn't and I was angry with the train station employees AND I peed on myself.

Anyway, when I was there, I noticed my peripheral assassin, as my Dad would say. He was one of the young boys from the snack counter. He was approximately 17, healthy and well-dressed. He was standing too close. No big thing in India, they always stand too close (because they intend to butt in front of you). But I noticed him and that's the point. After my question was [not] answered I started to walk over to Summer to give her the new details. I felt funny. Strange. This caused me to look in my bag for my wallet. It wasn't there. I looked at him. He looked at me. He started running. I screamed and pointed, "hey! HEY!," and Summer grabbed his shirt, and then two men caught him and started slapping and punching him. Hub Bub. Commotion. He tried to escape. I saw my wallet on the ground (he must have thrown it). I grabbed it. Then Summer and I tried to leave the station to get the heck out of there. "Ma'am!" the people called to me, holding my pick-pocketer. I thought maybe they thought I would want to punch him. I didn't. (I admit I kind of wanted to slap his face.) And then somebody said "police" and I realized I would have to give a statement. Side point: I have NO idea how he got his hand in my bag. I never felt it. And I was clutching it because I was aware and on edge because I just felt something was up. And he still got my wallet out of my bag.

We followed the mob, and I do mean mob. There were fifty of us walking to what I assumed would be the police station. Suddenly we were left behind and at the back of the mob. The boy tried to escape and begged and pleaded with his captors who continued slapping him, and we trod on. And on. It was far. The whole time they were slapping and punching him. I started to cry, because I just didn't want anything to do with this Justice anymore. What did I care? I had my wallet back. But the Police, you have to go to the Police, right? Ugh, in India I have heard they are corrupt, so do you really have to? I don't know! Leave me alone! (Pee Wee Herman).

I remembered a story where my friend Kevin's bag was stolen in Africa and a lynch mob caught the man and they asked Kevin, "do you want us to kill him?" Kevin was like, "no thank you." As we walked, I told Summer, "I don't want to send him to jail." and one of the mob looked at me like I was a crazy person and said, "you don't want him to go to jail???" When we got to the office the fifty men stayed to watch the scene unfold. There were papers and books and statements and all I could see was the poor boy laying on the ground and another man KICKING him in the face with his boot. I didn't want any part of it, none! I wanted out of there. We were asked to sit down on a bench. By this point, I still had not been asked, nor had I told anybody what happened.

They took the boy into a back room and a policeman took a strap and followed. From our bench, I had to hear them lashing him again and again and again and again and I couldn't stop my tears. I buried my head in my hands and sobbed. He got a million lashes and I could hear him crying and begging. I wanted to help him escape! But he stole my wallet! All around me people were talking in Hindi and still nobody had asked me what happened. The man I took to be the main policeman was smirking in a way that made me uncomfortable. It bothered me that nobody seemed to care that we might be upset by any of this. I asked: "what's going to happen to him?" but I couldn't get a straight answer from anybody. Finally I found a man who spoke English and I asked, "Where are we? Is this the police? What do they need from me?" They told me we were at the Train Police, and that the boy was being punished. They confirmed that I had my wallet back and that nothing else was missing. I was still crying and my leg started shaking uncontrollably. Summer held my hand and told me, "this is not your doing". She told the men we were satisfied and we didn't want anything further. I had my wallet and the boy was punished. They let us leave finally, but only after I gave my name, address and phone number. (Sorry mom, I gave them yours.) Regardless if I wanted to "press charges", they were going to "take care of him" and I have no idea what that means, except the man who spoke some English told me that they would make sure he never did this again.

Summer and I left the station, got ourselves an expensive hotel room ($40!), ordered up two double gin-and-tonics, enjoyed hot showers for the first time in over a month and slept until 4pm the next day. Alas, I don't think I'll ever be over it.

I love my mom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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When [Broken Down] in Rome...

If you're on a bus that costs less than $3.00 for a 9-hour trip across country, there's a very good chance the bus will break down. Sometimes the breakdown isn't even really a breakdown, for example we recently had a gear shifter fall off. No joke. The driver pulled over, everybody got off and pushed the bus to a mechanic. We walked around and waited until the bus was fixed.

 

During this particular breakdown, I peed behind an abandoned bus in full view of two truck drivers who didn't even pretend not to look. And then I threw my tissue on the ground.

 

When [broken down] in Rome...

 

Broken gear shifter

I mean come on! The whole town was a garbage can.

 

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Speaking of Trains...

We rode overnight buses to get from London to Paris, then to Berlin and then to Krakow and it was pretty awful. Espacially for Ross, whose 6 foot 3 inch body could not find a comfortable sleeping position. And so for the first day in the new city, poor Ross needed to catch up on his Zs. We decided to start taking trains as soon as we could afford them, and the first opportunity presented itself from Krakow to Bratislava. And you know how THAT went. Well, we ended up in Budapest and loved the crap out of it but couldn´t stay forever. We decided to buy train tickets bound for Croatia, but at the last minute decided to pop on over to Slovenia to a lovely city called Ljubljana on our way. I pronounced it Jub Jahna to the train station ticket seller lady and she corrected me. It is Lyoob Lyahna. Well Excuuuuuuuse me. Anyway, I heard great things about it from friends at the hostel and also from the interwebz so we headed there and I´m actually typing this from the computer at our hostel in Slovenia, which has a MEMORY CARD holder thingee and thats very exciting for me as I´m having trouble with my iPad as you know.

 

(Mz onlz complaint is that the y and z kezs are backwards on this kezboard and as zou can see itćs difficult for me to tzpe anzthing legible unless I conform to their fascist wazs.)

 

So a funny thing happened on the train today. I went to use the bathroom and when I stood at a certain angle I noticed daylight coming in through the toilet. The toilet didnt flush at all, it just dumped onto the tracks.  EW!!!

 

Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT lay down or touch any part of your body to the inside part of any train tracks in Hungary.



 

Look closely and you might see piles of human poop and puddles of human pee.

Ross is writing in his journal every single day.

Flush Boy

Ross and I stayed our first three nights in England at a friend's place out in Cornwall. Brett and his dad Luke were amazing hosts. We were very well taken care of, and had comfy warm beds to sleep in. I liked most how Brett knew after getting off the plane from Minneapolis and driving six hours out to his place I would need a beer immediately upon arrival. 

We were showered with delicious cous-cous/pork and chicken/bacon salads for dinner and sausages, waffles and tea for breakfast.

Are you kidding me? After this salad I asked Brett to marry me.

Unfortunately there was a problem with Brett's toilet. The flusher was complicated and as it turned out I was the only one in the house who was unable to get it to work...and I'm no toilet dummy. (I know how to take the tank topper off and work on the insides to make a toilet flush). But this one completely baffled me. No matter how many times Luke told me to tickle the handle I just couldn't get it. Anyway, soon the story went something like this: I would "go" and then yell "Oh, Flush Boy!" and Ross would come and flush.

Poor Ross.

This is a photo of a "privy" that I took at a museum. There was little plastic poop inside. Gross!

"You Can Stop it Now, Beth. Nobody's Looking At You."

In high school, my best friend Beth Lindahl used to make me die laughing by making faces at me and never cracking a smile until I peed my pants. One day in Health class, she must have been trying to get my attention but I must not have been looking at her because Miss Stadum yelled out to her (over the silent din of a class full of kids who were reading or something):

"YOU CAN STOP IT NOW BETH. NOBODY'S LOOKING AT YOU."

_____

I was reminded of that story this evening...

I went with some friends to go and see the Walker Art Center's last installation of Music and Movies in the Park. Barrio restaurant in downtown Minneapolis sets up their food truck at these events, and it was there that I had my Second and Third Dinners this evening.

As I approached for Third Dinner, I noticed that the food truck employee was wearing a "Nacho Libre"-type mask and was yelling "HOLA!" at the customers in a "BOO! (scared you)"-type fashion, and I was really not into it.

So I stood there looking at the menu, while this guy waited for me to notice him and his dumb mask. I wasn't impressed, but I could tell out of the corner of my eye that he really wanted me to notice him. I couldn't be bothered and so without taking my eyes off the menu I said, 

"I SEE YOUR DUMB MASK. OK?"

...and then I took this photo without his permission.

Say Goodbye to my Freckle-Stache!

You may remember I have a slight dermatalogical issue on my upper lip that I affectionately call my "freckle-stache". Scientifically, I believe it's called "hyperpigmentation" or "excess production of melanin" caused by "sun damage". Basically my upper lip is the one place on my entire body where I have successfully been able to get a tan.

Here's me after four months of continued sun exposure (albeit under a sun hat and with 70+ SPF on every inch of my body) in Central America. Freckle-stache in full force:

And here's me after four months of continued 75 hour work weeks in a Minnesota mortgage company office with no natural sunlight (albeit covered up with a large amount of Bare Esscentuals Bare Minerals powder). Freckle-stache in full force:

Well.  Today I read on NPR that the Chinese have come up with a very handy solution to my problem. It's called the "Face-kini" and it's all the rage on the beaches of China. You can buy one for $4.00 or make one yourself with old clothes. Check it out:

Click here to read the full story.

Another thing you'll learn from the article is that the Chinese like indoor pools better because they don't want to get a tan. That would make you seem poor like a common worker. But the pools are overcrowded and unsanitary and test very high for UREA, which you may recall is the chemical in URINE, which we usually call PEE here in America.

Click here to read THAT full story. EW.

I Had the House to Myself for Five Minutes

You may remember my current bathroom situation.  And look at the cute note my roomie/other mom left me at the bottom of my "housesitting chore list":

O.YES.I DID!!