I need bathroom renovation advice

We just don’t know what to do about this bathroom in the Swedish house. We are planning on gutting it but we don’t know how to put it back together.

It will be the only full bath in the (six bedroom!) house and so we want it to have the following elements: toilet, sink, storage, mirror, towel rack, tub, shower. It’s about 5×8 feet (160×257 cm). We had hoped to have a separate tub and shower but it seems the room is just too narrow for that I think.

The other problem is the window–if we have a shower/tub combo over there where the tub is now, how do we keep the window from being damaged by the water? And with that slanted ceiling a shower curtain won’t work, not that I like those anyway, and so I guess we’ll have to get some custom-cut glass panel. Or what?

And it looks like the typical thing there is to have floors and walls and the slanted ceiling all covered with the same linoleum-type material (but you can use different colors; we don’t want tile, except maybe for an accent somewhere).

So what should be put where? How do we solve our problems? What color(s) should it be? What kind of vanity? I need new thoughts on this!

The Afghanis

I was pretty depressed the years I kept not conceiving a child. The usual fixes were sought: the services of a reproductive endicronologist, a therapist, an anti-depressant medication, a new life direction (grad school), and everybody’s favorite suggestion for combating being mopey, volunteer work. (It must be said, though, that with all this, the only thing that really made me feel better about not being able to get pregnant was getting pregnant).

I decided to teach English as a Second Language to refugees and got hooked up with a family of Afghanis who lived in the run-down apartment complex not too far. Twice a week for a year I tutored them in their home. Despite spending so much time with them I never did get to know everyone very well in terms of demographic details–names, ages, familial structure–due to linguistic and cultural constraints as well as what I suspect was a sort of purposeful lack of forthcomingness and clarity on their part that I decided to respect and let go, being aware their previous and current life circumstances were not altogether happy and might not be enjoyable or simple to recount. I know at least one child of the oldest couple present had been murdered, and that mention of the Taliban made everybody drop their eyes.

What became very clear, at any rate, was the kindness of the family, and the exotic tastiness of their food (I remember a lot of almonds) and their tea (I recall a beautiful tea service). What never became clear, to them at least, was much of what I tried to teach them. The kids all got up to speed in their schools, but the adults, particularly the women, seemed so baffled by not only the language but the process of participating in educational efforts, that it felt like every week we just repeated the lessons of the week before. I had taught ESL to illiterate adults before, or at least tried to (it’s by far the most challenging instructional environment imaginable, bar wartime, disability, and total apathy), and had some tricks up my sleeve, but I’m not really sure I left them much better, English-wise, than I found them.

But I know I helped them when I went grocery shopping with them. I know I helped them when I navigated the school system with them on behalf of a child who was having trouble. I know I clarified some impenetrable INS paperwork (to the best any human was able). I know I got one lady to stop applying her nasal spray to her ears, having totally not understood the purpose of the medicine her doctor had prescribed her. I know I made them feel more at home in a new country, a friendly, American face who kept showing up, smiling, carrying confusing worksheets and insisting cheerfully upon their memorizing their phone number and address (not that anybody ever did).

My dad asks after them a lot; once I took him to meet them and he had some sort of wordless bonding with the patriarch. I wish I had kept seeing them, but I gave them up when I was sickly pregnant, working two jobs, and in grad school full-time. I don’t know if they fully understood why I stopped coming. I wonder where they are, how they are doing. I know they would have loved to see Little Girl. They would have been so happy for me; they had always seemed so concerned that I didn’t have children and my family was not close by. To them, I think, nothing (possessions, comfort) could be an adequate replacement for family ties.

Med

My grandfather was a surgeon and another close relative is a pediatrician. I never strongly considered medical school myself, mostly knowing I was not up for the gargantuan effort, and besides, I was jonesing for a baby as early as late college, but I appreciate medical arts and sciences and have had good experience with its practitioners and, yes, pretty much believe most of what my doctors tell me.

Sure, I wish medicine were more evidence-based and scientific and I recognize the unfortunate influence of drug company lobbyists (while being grateful for medications themselves, one of which, metformin, I take daily and which has hugely improved my health), and I know that my c-section wouldn’t have been considered necessary in many other countries, and that sometimes doctors make mistakes or don’t keep up with current research and have biases and strong attachment to preconceived notions just like anybody else.

Yet on the whole I am very cognizant of my good fortune in having access to experienced, educated, and kind medical practitioners, and I believe they mean my family well (insurance companies not so much). Medicine is one of the big perks of being human, and I see it as one of the super-neato ways that human intelligence and capabilities have developed in such a way as to guide our further evolution. No longer does shitty eyesight mean starvation! No longer can a small cut you weren’t able to keep clean potentially spell death! Now you can (sometimes) reproduce even against your body’s own inclination! Now, conceivably, we could be selecting for more subtle traits (in practice, though, the typically more scaled-back fertility of the more successful population–by some definitions–is the antithesis of how natural selection usually works. Now it’s survival of the least-apt to use contraception).

My appreciation of medical advances extends to topics like immunizations, so when the pediatrician finally got some H1N1 vaccine in, I immediately made an appointment. Little Girl’s not in school or around society at large much usually, but we’re about to go on a multi-state, multi-hotel, multi-tourist trap Thanksgiving trip, so I’m glad to offer her some additional protection. And to participate in the larger societal effort to reduce disease.

Plant murderess

Uhhh, I am so sore. Lately I’ve had a mania for yard work. Some patches of the property have gone wild–or were never tamed, I’m not sure–so I feel like a pioneer homesteader, clearing the land for my log cabin. Creating order when before there was chaos is fulfilling, and there’s an artistic element that I enjoy: Which palm fronds to lop off? How to shape that azalea? Do I want to allow that incipient bay tree to grow further or ought that spot to be bare?

I think I’ve got a patch of poison ivy on my wrist, and my stomach muscles today are enormously sore, I guess from the huge project of slaying that climbing wisteria vine yesterday (God, that quite the epic battle), but I’m already planning on patrolling the ligustrum border tomorrow, conquering the ilex. It’s nice to have a hobby.

The holey and the transgressive

I don’t know, I guess I developed some sort of allergy or something, but a few years ago I started being insanely irritated by wearing earrings, and I eventually gave up. But I’d like to wear them, you know? For one thing, people keep giving me earrings, so I have tons. And some I actually like.

But then I had a new problem: I couldn’t get an earring in my right ear even when I tried. And the left ear was no picnic. The holes had filled back in.

So I decided to get them pierced again. I’d had this plan in the back of my mind a bit–not like it was urgent–but last week, the day after my birthday, while running some errands, Little Girl and I passed a store that advertised body piercings. Hey, a real piercer! That sounded good! We went in and a hot Israeli guy said he could probably stretch the holes for me for 15 bucks. Sold!

So Little Girl and I followed him back to a the piercing room, which was wallpapered with photos of young ladies of dubious reputations showing off their belly-button piercings. I wanted to show Little Girl what I meant by pierced ears, so I took her over to the little display of fake body parts with piercings in them, when I realized that there were no regular ear piercings in evidence. Sure, there are noses and eyebrows and lips and other kinds of lips, but no ears, so I quickly redirected her attention.

Explaining that the piercer was “like a doctor” (she likes doctors, and plus he had on latex gloves; they were black, but still) and he was going to fix my ears so I could wear earrings, she held my hand while he stretched one hole (OUCH) and had to pierce anew the other.

Little Girl was cool with it. She asked a few times if she could have her ears pierced, too, but was satisfied with my answer that she’d have to wait until she’s 10, or maybe even 13. (She is familiar with this sort of answer as she gets it when she requests to drive the car. Also, I have no real reasoning for those ages she has to await, except that I myself had to wait until 13 and that seems…sensible).

From a mommy standpoint, I felt a little uncomfortable with the slightly sexual ambiance of the piercing parlor, though Little Girl didn’t seem to notice. The piercer’s attitude towards Little Girl was one I like, though: he neither fawned over her nor ignored her, was just matter-of-fact that she was a small person who was accompanying me. Anyway, it was hardly that transgressive a place to take her, nestled as it was between a Bed Bath & Beyond and an Old Navy.

And my ears are healing nicely, thank you.

Recipe

1 vague geocaching intent
0 geocaching experience
0 geocaching plan
1 fussy three-year-old
2 lazy dogs
0 strollers
0 containers of water
0 snacks
0 maps
and…
1 faulty motherfucking GPS device

This post writes itself, right? You can probably even infer the huge fight in the middle of nowhere after wandering around for two hours and arriving absolutely nowhere.

There’s a happy ending: Husband can run really fast, so he finally went and got the car so we didn’t have to drag ourselves all the way back, and then later we used his cell phone, which has GPS that actually functions, to, uh, drive to the spot, two miles away.

Maybe I was dressed up as a grown-up, did they ever think of that?

Since my birthday is two days after Halloween I traditionally have weeks of candy/cake/chocolate gifts to enjoy. This has been less the case this year as Little Girl mostly did not get sweets while trick-or-treating but boring shit like pretzels and popcorn balls and little plastic toys. Obviously this was great for her, but since, in addition, she also has a much lower tolerance for trick-or-treating than I do, and was ready to pack it in after no more than a dozen houses, there really has been no candy extravaganza, especially as we didn’t stock ourselves for trick-or-treaters at all, rightly expecting none (which is why we got in the car and traveled to the only child-infested neighborhood on the island for Halloween).

Wow, I don’t know what happened with that sentence, but it is really long. To summarize, it’s my birthday Monday, and Halloween was meager (but fun). They’re starting to do Halloween a bit in Sweden so I didn’t have another this-is-the-last-time-I’ll-ever-do-this-again freakout.

I dressed up, too, as always, and carried the extra treat bag a neighbor had given Little Girl. But nobody mistook me for a kid. One person even asked me, “Are you collecting for another child?” And then at lunch today the waitress, upon learning it was my birthday celebration, asked me, laughing, “Are you twenty-two today?” Why is that a joke? I mean, I could be twenty-two, right? How would she know? Hell, I could even be a teenager, for that matter! Maybe I was trick-or-treating!

Uh, I guess I’m having some birthday issues. But Halloween was good, even though it was pretty weird to be sweating while trick-or-treating. It was so warm that day we swam in the ocean. Ah, island living.

Bonus points if you can guess what Little Girl was. She nodded affirmatively to everyone’s guesses yesterday but nobody got it quite right. Probably because it’s not an actual thing. Cute, though. (She’d also nod affirmatively anytime anyone told her that, too. Which was even cuter.)

Why even get a wallet if there’s no money left to put in it?

My wallet’s falling apart. I wanted to get a new one. But wait–Swedish crown bills are a different size–I should just wait until we move.

I guess I’ll just add that to the increasingly-distressing list of Shit We Gotta Buy All Over Again In Sweden. I don’t understand how we are shipping a 20 ft. container and it doesn’t include any of these items. What the hell are we sending, then? The only stuff I remember for sure are fancy china we never use, pillows, and Christmas decorations.

Anon for this (I wish)

I googled my maiden name recently to alarming results.

There was an entry from a discontinued blog with a name referencing the college town near where I went to high school, so where many of my buddies matriculated; I could only read the snippet with my name in it from the search page, but, using my full name, the writer mentioned I had punched someone in the nose. WHAT?! I have no recollection of that. And I think I would.

Another site, I think it had something to do with MySpace, had some sort of thread in which I was mentioned and a poster whom I did recognize from high school (though she has a newer, sluttier look) made a rather nonspecific comment about never being able to forget my full name and “the incident with the garbage.” WTF?! I don’t remember anything about that, either, but it certainly sounds bad.

And why are these people even using my full name? Have they never heard of initials?

I also encountered some innocuous but embarrassing comments I stupidly made with my full name on forums on a) Oaxaca, Mexico and b) Kabbalah that are still hanging around on the internet eleven years later. Gah.

With my married name you mostly get Swedish ladies and multiple mentions of my one (1) publication, so that’s acceptable.

I know to be careful with what using my name on the internet (um, now), but evidently I have to worry about what other people might write, too. I may never tell anyone my full name again.

Anything juicy on the internet about you?

I’m not a woman, and she’s not my daughter

Three years in and I’m as yet unable to refer to Little Girl as my daughter. I can say, “my kid,” “my little girl,” or her name, but absolutely not “my daughter.” I am somewhat taken aback when other people call her my daughter. Of course she is, but…do they have to use that word?

And in what I think is the same vein, it weirds me out if someone refers to me as a woman. Sure, I’m female, but “lady” or “[Little Girl's name]’s mommy” or [Husband's name]’s wife” or my name are all much less discomfiting. Actually the wife thing may be a little alarming, too. Can I just be me?

Normally with a post like this I’d do some self-analysis and come to some conclusions, but really I can’t quite figure out why I have aversions to these perfectly common, perfectly accurate terms. And it’s not really a problem, just a quirk. I don’t, like, correct people who use them. But I wonder. Are the words perhaps too generic for me? Too grown-up? Threatening in some way? Do they refer to someone else in my head? Am I having identity problems? Am I a goofball?

I hate cold.

Six days ago we were swimming in the ocean and making sand castles in our bathing suits under a nice, warm sun. I don’t know what the hell happened but it’s totally freezing now. Hot weather doesn’t bother me at all–100 degrees? Great! No need to wear clothes!–but anything under 70 is unacceptable and we are already 20 degrees below that and I am unbearably cold. (Sweden, here I come!)

I’m pretty mopey about it. It feels not just like the end of this summer, but the end of any kind of summer for the rest of my life (don’t make fun of my melodrama). Even in July in Sweden you might need a jacket. Normally I like fall–my birthday, scarves, the candy, corduroys–but since the weather in Sweden is, in some ways, perpetually fall, at least Georgia-style, I’m not interested in experiencing it in advance. As though I had a choice. I’m pretty, disproportionately, I suppose, upset about the turn in the weather.

But I reluctantly put up the Halloween decorations and we carved a pumpkin and ate the seeds and that was nice so I guess I’m finally giving in and accepting that summer is gone and I’ll just have to be cold forever. There’s still fun stuff to do, I guess. Like washed-up logs to jump over and dead baby sharks–with teeth!–to poke at with sticks. It’s not all bad. Sigh. Sucks though. Least it’s not snowing, like it is in Sweden already.

Other people’s children

In my ESL class I’ve got a handful of au pairs from Europe and Latin America. I have to keep myself from pestering them with questions about their jobs because when they do share tidbits about lives with their host families it is beyond interesting to me–in fact, it’s downright titillating. It’s like some real-life Nanny Diaries, complete with distant, wealthy, indulgent parents (who have vacation homes just one hour from their regular homes!) with cross-cultural highlights and domestic service worker abuse. Plus it’s absolutely surreal when we can compare notes about the weird children’s librarian in the area who does storytime (since he just transferred from the library they go to to the one we do).

Tonight they were venting about how hard it is to have to work when they’re sick. What pricked my ears is that what they were calling work–taking care of little kids–is what I do for, well, definitely not work; actually, for me, my basically full-time mothering is pretty fun, and I certainly don’t get paid. It’s neither entertainment nor occupation. It’s just my life. It’s my default. And since it’s all under my control, if I’m sick, I can let Little Girl watch her favorite video, a Swedish thing about a cow and a crow that I imagine she would be happy to watch all her waking hours, for indeed all those waking hours, if I feel like it. I make a million little decisions all on my own every day about how to raise my little girl, and it’s all up to me.

But not for the au pairs. The parents, their employers, have decided, say, the kids can only 30 minutes a day, and since these women (really they’re all in their late teens, so I’m gonna have to change that to girls) have all the responsibilities of mothering and none of the agency, for often twelve hours a day, they have to work. They can’t have a lazy sick day. They can’t take off, because then who would watch the kids? Certainly the employers are too important to miss work. And the au pairs can’t decide how to discipline the kids. They can’t decide what activities they want to take the kids to. They put the kids to bed, even if the parents are there. And then they’re supposed to shut their caregiving selves off and sit quietly until their rooms until it’s time to make breakfast.

Once upon a time I was a nanny, though I didn’t live there, and I recall acutely the trapped, impotent feeling of waiting for parents late to arrive home from work. It felt so unfair when it turned out they’d just been out shopping, like they were using my time, even if it was compensated, against my will and contrary to our agreement. There were schedules that weren’t mine to follow, norms to uphold that went against my grain (like letting the baby cry herself to sleep). I felt guilty taking the kiddos to do the errands I had to that could only happen during the day, like the DMV. Whenever I looked at my old driver’s license pic I recalled, down out of the frame, that my hands were each gripped by a smaller one.

They had fun that day, playing I Spy in line, but they weren’t my kids. Perhaps their mother would have preferred that precious day of growing up to have been spent some other way. With Little Girl it’s completely automatic, not to say unavoidable, that she goes everywhere with me, and I think it’s good for her to participate in society along with me. But then she’s mine, and I’m her social director, and I love that our lives are entirely enmeshed, and I’m there alongside her taking in her experiences and helping her to understand them. No one else would or could, no matter how long the instruction sheet, replicate that with her. Certainly no one to whom it was just work, something they only have to do, not get to do.

I’ve yet to hear a caring word about their charges from the au pairs, or something that even individualizes the kids they’re with so many hours. The events of their daily lives are so alike to mine and yet their motivation and enjoyment so different, it’s like some skewed mirror that reflects back only a faint and colorless outline of my life with Little Girl. I guess my take-home message really shouldn’t be “non-parental childcare is bad” but rather “these au pairs and/or their situations are kind of shitty.” Still, learning how those girls feel about caring for other people’s children makes me so grateful I’m the one caring for mine.