While stumbling around HD (home for the departed?) yesterday, a lovely sliding screen door practically jumped into my path. I mean, I wasn't even looking for a screen door. I was on a toilet-hunting mission. I took it as a sign that I was meant to have an insect-free apartment. No need for measurements, it looked about right.
As I said, my mission was to find a plain, white toilet. Duck in, pay $70, duck out with a toilet. How hard could that be? HD had cleverly placed all their toilets (well, the ones for sale) on the ceiling. They were hanging from the ceiling (I am so not making this up). And since there were, oh a few thousand choices, all white, I decided that I must vigorously research them before buying. Nobody in their right mind just runs out and buys a white toilet! What was I thinking?!?!
I had big decisions to make! Did I want the Williamsburg Elongated One-Piece Toilet in White? (Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia from 1699 to 1780. A little bit of history in the salle de bain). Or did I want the Memoirs(R) Comfort Height(TM) Elongated Toilet with Stately Design, White? (I'm dying to know what it remembers ... or what memories it induces.) Or, being the Anglophile that I am, perhaps I'd be more suited to the Devonshire(R) Elongated Toilet Bowl, White, which presumably flushes with an English accent. Very cosmopolitan.
Buying a car is easier.
So I gave up on the whole toilet endeavor, since it was giving me an HD headache, and instead, came home with a screen door.
Reading through the screen door instructions, I caught on to the fact that the door's height could be adjusted. NOT THAT IT SAID THAT ANYWHERE. But adjusting it required tools. A huge obstacle in the NBTR household. Our motto? "Everything has a place, but nothing is in its place."
I finally located the phillips head screwdriver in Number One Daughter's nightstand. (I am so not making this up.)
So, the door first went on backwards, then backwards and upside down, then frontwards but upside down. I figured I was winning though. The door went on three ways, all wrong. But I suffered four scraped knuckles! (See? 4-3. Love. Whatever.)
A few HOURS later, it was still wrong. Like an itch you can't scratch, it was really bugging me that we'd have to open our new, if bloodied, screen door, by digging fingers into the "bug seal" and sliding it to the right, instead of using the actual handle. Which was on the right. So when the door was open, you couldn't even get to the handle.
For the record, nowhere in the instructions did it say P.S. Before starting, MAKE SURE YOU'VE GOT THE DOOR SITUATED CORRECTLY!!! I mean, that's just sloppy, if not criminal.
Where oh where is rent-a-husband when you need it?!?!?
Obligatory Running Note: Saturday I ran 6.48 miles with my running group. Neither of the coaches for the "slow" group showed up (one was scheduled to be out), so I pretended to be a coach. It was perfect running weather. Cool, crisp, sunny. We ran along the C & O canal, on the towpath, from Fletchers Boat House, to Key Bridge, back past Fletchers to Chain Bridge and back.
I ran back and forth between them but they were really spread out. I cheered them on at the turnaround. It's quite an eye opener running with people who are slower than you are and encouraging them. I highly recommend it for your own mental health, if nothing else. What a difference from last week's death march when I could barely choke out the words "water, give me water." So I'm a little behind schedule because my long run should be at eight, but whaddya gonna do?
What I'm gonna do is sit back and admire my slightly off-kilter screen door, you know, the one with the blood on it. And the 1/2 inch gap at the top. It kind of looks like it needs braces. I'll feel the cool August breeze waft in as I sit on the couch and leaf through the toilet section of the HD catalog. Here's a racey little number:
Only $1,899! It's electric, it composts. I daresay it might even do the dishes.
