The excess toilet

This is not a bathroom.


You're looking at that photo in disbelief, aren't you?

Believe me, it is not a bathroom. It needs a door.

We learned that when were in the midst of selling our last home.

By definition (whichever one mattered at the time) a bathroom must have a door. You know, a door for privacy.

Lucky for us, it didn't have to be a very secure or very private door. A few dollars for a cheap curtain and rod and we were approved to sell. (The main bathroom did have a working, solid wood door. It was the second bathroom which was having an identity crisis.)

I'm sure the new owner was thrilled.

Around here, it really doesn't matter if a bathroom has a door or not. There is no privacy with young children about. I couldn't tell you the last time I pooped alone. However, it is on the list of things I hope to do again someday when my children are older. What a list! I should write about it sometime.

This is only a toilet.


Too bad, because otherwise I might be able to say it was the fastest bathroom my husband ever built. I was rather impressed. Not the best bathroom he ever built, but certainly the fastest. That must count for something?

I was the first one to use it.

Now that must surely count for something?

I used it because someone had parked himself on the other one.

My three year old has issues. One of his issues is that he sometimes needs to sit on the toilet for awhile before he can get his poop out. It doesn't seem to be a real problem for him, or anything, just that he sits.

Well, it is a problem in that we only have had one toilet in the house, and there are five of us.

Alright, there are only four of us that use the toilet. But still!

That child will sit there, for something like an hour or longer... almost every day. Yeah, I give him prunes for lunch a few times a week. He loves them and thinks they're just the coolest thing ever, besides gummy worms. Doesn't seem to matter though.

If I am so rude as to bother this child and ask him if he is finished sitting there on his throne, he waves me away with his hand like some snobby royal prince, while commanding, "AWAY!".

Seriously, I have no idea where he got that from.

This is toilet paper.


My five year old was given the task of obtaining several rolls of paper for our shiny new toilet. He was so thrilled, you would think it was the greatest honor we could have bestowed upon him. His level of excitement went far beyond his level of involvement in the project. (He did help install the dumb thing.)

I was minding my own business doing dishes (which usually has nothing to do with a toilet) when he suddenly appeared beside me.

"MOMMY!!! I saw the parts on the inside of the tank that makes it flush! And it flushes really, really, really good! And when it flushes it goes KASHOOOOOOOOOOSH! And there was a leak! But Daddy tightened it up and now it's fixed! And Daddy wants me to bring him TWO ROLLS OF TOILET PAPER!"

Just as quickly as he appeared, he was gone.

Have I mentioned we don't have a television and tend to be rather easy to entertain?

Anyway...

We had to put in a second bathroom toilet in preparing to fix the gashed sewer pipe which I mentioned in this post. Remember?

One hundred dollars for a toilet in the middle of my basement. It was the cheapest one. I would rather have spent one thousand dollars for ten toilets and sent them to Haiti, along with a good plumber and a backhoe and pipes and whatever else they need to make them work.

At the moment, I'm feeling guilty about my second toilet. Yeah, we need it while we repair the big pipe, but how long will that take?

The truth is, it is excess, and we already have so much more than we need.

The sad thing is, after some time, most of the world is certain to forget about what happened in Haiti.

My hope is that this extra toilet will remind me of how much I have, remind me of how blessed I am, remind me to give and pray.

My hope is that I will remember that somewhere, someone is hurting.

Oh yeah, and I hope this toilet (since it does happen to be in the middle of my basement) does flush really, really good. Because the truth is, an excess toilet will probably be a useful thing to have.