January 2019 - Imaginarios Writing and editing

January 24, 2019April 15, 2019

5. An outdoor shower sounds nice.

Vinyl ofuro-style tub. — **Just add water!**

Back to my shower. That same handyman who built the throne platform, bless his soul, laid in low-end laminate paneling over the back wall of the shower without consulting me. I was out of state, not yet living here full-time, and came back to find top and bottom in two pieces, patched together with caulk. Later, a friend put up some sheetboard for the side walls. Water eventually started leaking out onto the floor and through the wall to the porch. I recently painted it all again, but the walls are warping badly. New stop-gap caulking has been employed. We’ll see how that goes.

My dream is to create a (seasonal) outdoor rustic shower and galvanized tub oasis, surrounded by a pretty cedar privacy fence. I picture a steamy bath, looking up at the stars, with candles and incense burning on little log stands while I sip wine or homemade kombucha. When I propose this out loud, I get puzzled looks. Is she unhinged?? I’m sure not getting any buy-in to help me build my dream.

I’ve bought lots of parts, gizmos, and gewgaws that I thought might solve my problem. When the shower was offline, I got a solar shower bladder. One of those bags you fill with water and leave in the sun to warm up. It warmed up just fine, and the water came out nicely enough, but there was nowhere to hang it. Even if I wanted to spritz off outside (fully clothed), there are no big trees near the house. Inside, it was too heavy for the shower pipes, and it had to be positioned somewhere near a drain. After I bought a heavy duty, 5-foot-tall shepherd’s hook plant stand that kept tipping over, I nixed the indoor solar shower bag except for emergencies.

And I have looked at outdoor shower enclosures, but I’ve got no fence to hide one from plain sight. I wouldn’t blame any looky-loos passing by. I would look too if I was driving down the highway, and saw someone showering. It’s not like this is the beach. I can get real nostalgic about the ‘sixties in Santa Monica — my friends and I bikini-clad, dancing in the sand. “Those were the days… we thought they would never end.” Well, many decades later, in this tiny Montana prairie town, we have pretty fierce weather that comes up on a moment’s notice. A shower enclosure would soon be gone with the wind.

I bought a stock tank with a drain plug. It actually might have worked in the mudroom (back porch) — except for the floor-on-an-angle issue. After I spent quite some time and several trips to the hardware store figuring out how to more or less securely attach a hose to drain the bathwater out the back door, I didn’t have the motivation to find new homes for all the stuff I would have to stash somewhere, and then possibly discover a fatal flaw in my plan that I hadn’t thought of.

I bought a plastic inflatable ofuro tub, a circular Japanese soaker with high sides that you step into. Surprisingly, that thing is almost usable. Almost for sure.

This whole thing started about 10 years ago, actually, when I bought a pre-fab shower surround, the smallest one I could find, RV-size. It was still too big. It would have needed to be cut and then jockeyed into place behind the exposed pipes. I gave up trying to find anyone supportive of this solution, so it’s sitting out in my garage (“garage” being a term I use loosely). Ultimately, I gave up and had to go with the sheetboard, with quarter-round in the corners. I’m so tired of settling for workarounds that are third-class makeshift survival hacks, I want to scream. In fact, I have screamed (into the wind) about this. Many times. In the end, I always end up taking what I can get. And I need a damn bathroom, no matter what it looks like. (A “damn bathroom” being preferable to none.)

In warm weather, the plumbing is reliable at least 80% of the time. In the winter, I keep a space heater going around the clock so the water doesn’t freeze. Leaving town for an extended trip means getting help to winterize the house – blowing out the pipes and turning off the water. It’s also prone to backing up. Last year, I bought a highly rated compost toilet that would be easier to deal with in the winter if I left, and would be a backup the rest of the year. I can’t quite figure out where, or how, to install it. Or find anyone who believes that these things are worthy of consideration. And this from a community where outhouses are still a vivid memory. My current plan is to get a big shed, and stick it in there.

You are probably head-scratching at this point, thinking WTH? Why is she living like this? I’m not ready to go there yet.

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January 15, 2019April 15, 2019

4. Jolly times and fun facts

I’ve pulled the toilet and reseated it on a new wax ring twice in the last year, and it needs doing again. A handyman built a wooden platform for the “throne” so to speak, but the boards are now warped and popping up. Did I mention the floor is sloping down at a steep angle? Hard to level a toilet on that. Hard to stand up straight sometimes too. I got tired of rocking when seated, so I inserted little plastic shims under the base. I figured they’d also help stop the water leaking out around the sides. But like I said, the floorboards are warped, so this was not a perfect solution. A friend came over and tightened the two bolts holding the toilet down, but he’s not sure they aren’t going to work loose again. (They will.) A non-working bathroom is one of the situations that makes me really want to cry. Once, a handyman who sadly is no longer with us came, worked on it, couldn’t fix it right away, and left me with no bathroom. I was not a happy camper.

Moving on to the walls – someone in the fifties or forties thought it would be a good idea to cover them with sheets of linoleum. An inch-wide strip of black faux-tile linoleum was added as a decorative touch, an attempt at wainscoting I guess. All that linoleum is now coming unstuck, just hanging there, revealing a pervasive layer of haphazardly spattered black unremovable mastic. I’m going to tear off the linoleum, then try to primer and paint over the gob-smacked walls, and just ignore the bumpy texture. The stuff won’t pry loose, and it’s supposed to be hazardous if disturbed anyway.

That’s another fun fact about this house. It’s got toxic stuff in and on the walls. Lead paint, of course. That’s not remarkable for a house this old. But that black mastic, oh my. And then there’s the insulation. One summer in the sixties, I remember my grandparents being excited about just having had this installed. A contractor cut knotholes around the exterior, and blew Zonolite (vermiculite) into the house. This horrible substance was touted as a great way to insulate the houses in this area. It was from a now-closed mine in Libby, Montana. A superfund site. There was a class-action settlement many years later. I got authorization to claim $4000, and I still could do that, but hiring a certified crew for any remediation work would cost a lot more by a longshot. As the homeowner, I could do the work myself. Seriously, that is not going to happen. As long as I don’t disturb any toxic substances, I can make do. So that’s what I am doing. Making do.

January 7, 2019April 15, 2019

3. This is one hard-water town, Mabel.

Showerhead and pipes in old bathroom — Maybe I could sell it on eBay as a vintage plumbing fixture?

The water here is terrible. Technically, with all the softener chemicals added to it, it’s potable, but I don’t know anyone who drinks it out of the tap. Well, I used to know one person who did. She was a pretty tough cookie; one of my heroes. She also ate apple seeds, cyanide and all. And thrived.

Sediment builds up in all my fixtures and water-gulping appliances. Thick white salty crusty layers coat my dish drainer. The showerhead, old and rusty, plugs up all the time, then the faceplate flies off its stem. I’ve got the original, no-frills wetbath. If I notice the problem before the disc loses its grip, just as water starts to spray out from the perimeter, I can take a nail and a toothpick to open the holes. First I have to unscrew it and clean it with vinegar. This is, unlike rolling canned goods in the kitchen, not my idea of fun, particularly.

I look longingly online at beautiful showerheads that promise a selectable perfect-pressure flow, lit by a soothing palette of colors. With a nice handheld attachment. I’d need a custom-machined adapter of some kind because this one cannot be removed without cutting it off and replacing the pipe with new threads. Since all the water pipes in the house are exposed, this shouldn’t be too hard, but I’m not a plumber. Plumbers are hard to come by in these parts. Most people here try to do their own work. And learn the hard way what not to do. I’m not going to tempt fate. Even if I could find some encouraging You Tube tutorials, I don’t have the tools.

The bathroom door doesn’t fit anymore because of the floor-slope situation. There are big gaps top and bottom and on the sides of the door. It’s homemade out of beadboard. When I was a child visiting here in the summers, it latched. Recently I screwed in a hook and eye to hold it shut to make guests more comfortable. A friend sawed off some of the sides and bottom to make it closeable; too much, unfortunately. So now there are gaps. The hook and eye are too high for the grandkids to use, but at this stage they’re not too picky about privacy. They’re not due for another visit till next summer, so I’m not going to sweat it.