Rambling Notes from an Eccentric Airbrain

Warning: hopeless meandering may take place in this blog.  Also there might be rambling, roaming, hornswaggling, and wait, my new word from Hampton Roads Writers, hooptadoodling.  (The word is actually hooptadoodle, but I did a literary license thing and made it into a verb.  I'm bad.  Someone must punish me.)

I think the move broke me.  Maybe it was the heat.  All I know is that I don't go outside voluntarily between the hours of 10 AM and 8 PM.  Then I prowl the neighborhood looking at other people's houses and thinking, "I could do that to my house."  "Oh, my, look what they did with their shutters."  "Hey, they've got a waterfall.  We could have a waterfall."  Then I think about how much that would cost and my brain shuts down again.  (I'm caught in a kind of DIY/Home Improvement mind loop that happens to me every time we move.  HIM says it's like I'm trying to pee in every corner of the house, except I'm not using pee.  HIM is so droll.)

While the new house is a very nice house and not necessarily a new house, it is a house in need of TLC.  This, that and the other is broken.  Or it's about to break.  Or it's screaming with agony.  For example, we have a toilet that I have not-so-endearingly nicknamed "Moaning Myrtle."  Moaning Myrtle, for those of you non-Harry-Potter fans, is a ghost who haunts a bathroom at Hogwarts Castle.  She does moan a lot and not in a good way.  So does the toilet upstairs.  In fact, it moans and shakes.  It makes me think it's about to become a first floor toilet, and also not in a good way.  So hey, we bought a new toilet.  The new toilet has buttons on it.  (I'm impressed.)  One button is for peepee and the other button is for poopoo.  Imagine trying to explain that to your eight-year-old daughter.  It was great fun.  ("Why?" "Because peepee needs less water."  "Why?"  "Because peepee is mostly water."  "Why?" "Hey, let's get ice cream."  "Why?")

Installation of new toilets means you must first take out the old toilet.  In a house that is older than 10 years, that means that you must take a hack saw and saw off the bolts at the bottom because they're probably rusted solid.  (It said so in the instructions that came with the new toilet.  They know.  They know.)  Also you have to scrape out the old wax ring, which is really icky.  Also you need some towels and bowls in case you didn't get all the water out of the toilet.  (Interesting factoid.  If you pour a bucket of water into a toilet, it will flush by itself.  WOW!  Something you wanted to know, right?  Go try it.  It empties out the bowl.  Of course, you have to turn off the water valve to the toilet first.) (Don't forget to wash your hands before coming back to the computer and using the keyboard.)


So this course of thinking got me to wondering what a toilet
would say, if a toilet could speak, which results in
much blog hilarity.  Of course.

So you'd think we did Moaning Myrtle first?  No, we opted for the half-bath downstairs, partly because that's the one everyone is using and partly (mainly) because neither one of us wanted to heft the really, really really heavy box with the new toilet in it up the stairs.  I like my back in a non-hurting state.  So does HIM.  So next weekend, it's Moaning Myrtle's turn.  HIM tried to make Moaning Myrtle work by adjusting the flapper valve inside the tank, but what that did was to make her moan longer and longer.  Haha.  She went on for about five minutes before I said, "Make it stop."  Then HIM said, "It'll go off in a minute."  I said, "It's not going off."  Then about a minute later, as the toilet was still wailing like the damned, I waggled my eyebrows at HIM in a meaningful fashion.  (Not the happy-happy joy-joy meaningful fashion way, but rather in an oh-for-the-love-of-Merciful-Pete-are-you-going-to-do-something-now? fashion.)  So HIM went and turned Myrtle off.


I don't think the toilets in the Y have fun.  But then
the toilets at all the public schools don't have
fun either or the bus stations or the airports.
Toilets are very sad.  We need to draw happy faces on
them.

Meanwhile, in the old house we have rented out to strange people who said they liked my bell ringer, there was damage to the storm door from the humdinger of a storm that whizzed through last week.  I have to figure out how to get someone to measure the storm door opening and get a new storm door and get someone to actually take out the old one and put in the new one.  All without writing a million dollar check.  Landlord = having to keep things up.  Bad landlord = wanting to say, "Oh, it's not bent, it's modern."

The cat and the kid have adjusted to the new house.  I haven't seen a ghost yet although closet doors keep opening by themselves.  The stove is frickin' electric and I hate cooking on electric.  (Apparently every house HIM looked at in the area is all electric because there's a nearby nuclear plant.  Nu-cle-ar.  Did anyone see Madagascar 3 yet?)

I'm going to melt into a pile of fat woman goo.

There.  Doesn't a little mascara and lipstick and a comedic demeanor
make that toilet seem happier?
For the person who just said, "But she's crying on the inside,"
I say, "Pfft."