RIP porcelain master

Do you know what makes a spectacular calamity at 6:45 in the morning? A 96-year-old, 6-gallon wall mounted toilet falling off the wall and pulling the water supply line with it.

After almost a century of handling this home's business, and I mean all of its business as we are a single-bathroom home, it took little more than the steam from the equally ancient shower Aleo had just turned on to have the final bolts let loose of its grip on the subway tile and come crashing atop the seat (which also broke in spectacular fashion).

While we were saddened to lose this storied part of our home, Marty and I are thankful for the opportunity to install our replacment toilet ourselves (with encouragment and help from a co-worker of Marty's--super-Kyle). While we love our new toilet (and that WE installed it), the home's original will be missed, but not forgotten. This rememberance will be assisted by a photo collage hanging over our toilet of Marty, Bella, Alex, and Anthony all using it (not at the same time). This picture-set usually elicits a few questions from guests in our home, which I will take a moment to answer here.



Why do you have pictures of everyone in your family using the toilet?
Because Marty would not let me decoupage our bathroom walls with pictures of bathrooms from around the world, which is something I have thanks to my Everyman Photo Contest. Fact is, once the Everyman took off and I had tens of thousands of photos to choose from, I had a vision of collaging our entire house with pictures of each part of the house. Meaning, our stairwell would be a collage of staircases. Our bedroom would have been a collection of bedrooms. And our bathroom, logically, would have people using the bathroom from all over the world. When Marty blocked that, emphatically so, our compromise was having pictures of the people that use our bathroom, using our bathroom. Though Marty would probably challenge the use of the term "compromise" in this situation.

Why do you even have pictures of your family on the toilet?
Because I take pictures of people doing everything. For Example.

Why isn't there a picture of you, Troy, included?
Because it is only a four-picture frame so mine wouldn't fit ;-) The real answer is there used to be, but the frame fell and was damaged and just never got put back up. But that picture does exist.

Couldn't you have throught of a more subtle and elegant way to honor the toilet?
Probably.

Marathon Walk

Out of nowhere, Bella asked if I would walk a marathon with her. Now this was not an organized event. It was just a leave your house and walk 26 random miles event. Without giving it a whole lot of thought, I said sure. Honestly, a large part of me didn't really expect it to happen so it felt like one of the safer shows of support I had ever given one of my children.

Then a few weeks later Bella started asking if this day might work for our marathon-walk. Oh. Uhh. Yeah. Sure.

Then the day before the day, Bella told me that Anthony (age 13) would be joining us. His participation may have surprised me more than the fact that this walk seemed to be happening.

And when the day came, Bella and Anthony were out of bed and lacing up shoes and Marty was loading up the Camelback. Within the hour we were out the door and logging our first mile.

I originally considered mapping a walk but realized there was little point to that. We just needed to walk. It didn't really matter where we went. We each had a tracker. Bella used her phone. I used my vivofit 2 (wearable pedometer), and I gave anthony my bike computer (which works for walking as well). We are fortunate that we have all sorts of beautiful cityscape and neighborhoods and one of the largest city parks in America surrounding our home so we just sort of wended our way around our community.

I spent the first part of the walk trying to understand Anthony's interest in this. It didn't take me long to find my answer. In my mind I understood that this would be an all-day march. I learned neither Bella or Anthony fully did the math on it. After the first hour, we saw a neat little bench and decided to take a quick break. Then we stumbled upon this adorable public garden and decided to sit in there for a bit and enjoy the view. Then an hour after that, we came upon a park and took another break. When Anthony looked at our distance and saw that two hours' effort bought us five miles, the unasked question was asked--So, just how long is this going to take?

After I broke the news he confessed that he thought we would be done by noon. Feeling sympathetic for this miscalculation I designed a route that would take us by home at the midway point for lunch and bathroom breaks. In addition to being kind to our bladders, I thought this provided Anthony an easy out for the second leg given he misunderstood what he signed up for (though I never told him that is why I took us back home). After we ate and rested for a bit, Bella and I (and Leta) started prepping to head back out and when we met in the foyer, Anthony was there too. I expressed surprise that he was going back out. He said he had come this far, he might as well finish it. Proud, proud, proud.

During the walk, Bella made these phone updates after every mile. I didn't fully understand what was happening with them and I thought it might get annoying. But it proved to be a nice way to tick the miles off and show our progress. When she shared the finished product with me, I thought it was super cool. Anytime I re-watch it, I'm totally transported back to the day and I have all sorts of memories surrounding the short clips. Fun, fun stuff.

This happened in June of 2020. Bella and I have since talked about doing another marathon walk. Anytime the subject has been raised, Anthony has always raised a hand to say that once was enough for him. Though, just a few nights ago at dinner, he might have been heard to say that he would be open to doing a half-marathon. So, perhaps in another six months, he might be good for the full-boat again. And next time, I think we might get Marta to join us.

Failed Foster

In other news, Bella got a dog.

We have been fostering dogs for a few years now. This was how Bella tricked us into kinda having dogs. But it turned out to be a pretty nice setup. We got the experience of having dogs, we got to help out some dogs in need and be part of them finding permanent homes, and we got breaks from dogs when we needed them. Leta came to us when we were on one of our fostering breaks. The rescue we work with called and asked if we could help them out as the local operations got overrun by a situation that unexpectedly brought in over forty dogs at once. Leta had just had surgery and needed a quiet place to recover. We are this rescue's go-to "quiet" place.

When we first got her, she acted more like a deer than a dog. This was for a couple of reasons. First, she looked a lot like a miniature deer. Second, the situation she came from had some semi-feral qualities so she wasn't accustomed to a proper home situation. This meant when we let her out, she would look for quiet hidden places and essentially bed-down like a young deer. She was super uncertain about people but took to other animals quite well. Whatever her story, she was a unique animal for us (most of ours were puppy-mill recoveries). And her quiet and gentle ways had Bella pretty done for, pretty quickly.

We got her just before the 2019 holidays and adopted her on Bella's 19th birthday (in March). This coincided with the covid spool-up so in that regard it could not have been more perfectly timed. We slowly gained her trust and she is now a comfortable member of the family. The greatest evidence of this is she even likes Marty and more telling is, Marty even likes her.

Meet Leta

Administrative matter

My mother would have complained about last year's christmas photo. She would have commented on how you couldn't see anyone. I would have defended the pic saying that it was neat how everyone was reflected off the ski goggle. She would have said she doesn't care about neat. She just wants to see her grandbabies (and her baby--me!). So these pics are for my mother and anyone else who might share her position about the disadvantages of 'neat' photography.

Baya, Aleo, Anfer, Troy

Marta

And we might have to do this dance again as I don't know how much my mother would have liked this year's holiday photo (coming Friday).

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