Something's Gotta Give: And I'm hoping I don't have to resort to hiding a body.

My number one goal in life right now is to take a shower without an audience.

When the Bean was tiny I'd drag her little bouncy seat into the bathroom and lay her on it, sleeping, while I attempted to shower. Every six seconds I would peek around the shower curtain to make sure she was still breathing. I never bothered to condition my hair because the softness of my hair was not worth her life, y'all! (I was such a New Mom.)

With the second child, age and experience allowed me to shave the armpits, peek, shampoo, peek, condition, peek, think about shaving my legs, decide against it, and get out.

As the girls grew, the length of my showers grew.

I met Big V when I was living in a cute house a block from the lake with two full sized bathrooms. Two! I was happy.

I then moved with my two kids into his one bathroom house. One.

And then I had another child. Let me help you with the math:

 5 people + 1 bathroom = Hell

To make matters worse, our only bathroom does not have an exhaust fan, which means three minutes into the shower you're feeling light headed and woozy. The mirror is covered in a thick fog and you're about to slip into a coma. Our solution: shower with the bathroom door open.

Give it 48 seconds and the 18-month old is standing on the opposite side of the shower curtain splashing in the toilet bowl, the 9-year old wants to repeat verbatim every ICarly episode she's ever watched, and the teen barges in suddenly remembering she needs money for school lunch and should she get your purse?

I am showering, people! I am naked, soapy and angry because ten minutes ago not one of you even vaguely looked in my general direction and yet suddenly I am the person you need to talk to. Right now. Before I rinse off.

And then, as if it can't get any worse: Big V suddenly needs to pee. Which means he has to come in and kick everyone else out, which makes them whine and complain and I'm still standing in the shower, sobbing, listening to the sound of a urine stream while he tells me he has to play basketball tonight because it's the last game of the season.

Something's gotta give. Either I need more bathrooms or less people - and while it rained this past week allowing for the softening of the soil and easing up the whole where should I hide the body? dilemma, the possibility of me going to jail and being forced to shower with a really scary, criminal audience is enough of a deterrence for me to opt for the More Bathrooms route.

But neither V or I know anything at all about how to put a bathroom in your house. We know one would fit in the basement because the basement is a big, wide open space. But there are all these rules and codes and permits and then there's all the decisions: what sized door? What kind of toilet? What type of light switch? It's too much for my feeble mind. I just want to shower alone.

How much money do we need? Do we have enough? Do we need more? Who do we get? Is our job too big for a handyman? Too small for a 'real' construction company? Are we going to get screwed over and give our hard earned money to someone that never shows up to do the work? Am I going to need to call  Mike Holmes?  I can't even think about this! It's just too much!

I have dreams, ideas, visions: White. Airy. Open. Clean lines. Calm.

How on earth can anyone interpret the (extremely) vague finished product hiding in my mind into something that makes sense, something that we can afford and yet something I'm not disappointed in when it's all said and done?



photo credit: xJavierx; flicker



For years now Big V and I have come right to this exact point.... where we know something has to happen, but we are too scared and too insecure to know what to do next, so we decide to do nothing. And then complain about the fact that no one gets any privacy in the bathroom. Simply put, our fear of not knowing what to do stops us in our tracks.

Oh, and also, anyone in my family knows that I could not actually live with the rounded tub shown in the above photo. I have issues with rounded things. I like straight lines and 90-degree angles. I like mission-style and Shaker furniture. That's why I get along so well with the Amish. Well, I mean, I would get along well with the Amish if I actually knew any Amish people. Except I wouldn't like their horses. Unless they were toothless. Horses bite, people. Stop looking at me like that.