Six weeks without a Toilet

Today I feel like a trapped mouse in a maze.

At work, the office building is being painted, and the bathrooms are being gutted out. The windows are covered with plastic, and we have no working toilet. Sure, there are porta potties out there in the parking lot-but who wants to use those? They even took our water fountain out of the building. To make matters worse, it is freezing cold in my office. I feel like I’m working in a 3 World Country. If it wasn’t for the hand disinfectant we have in the front office, we can’t even clean our hands. There is no running water for my plants either. We were told that we will have to use the porta potties for SIX WEEKS until the bathrooms will be completely ready for our butts to sit down on the new freaken “golden” toilets. Six, freaken weeks! Why on Earth does it take SIX weeks to replace a bathroom?! Don’t we live in America for God’s sake?

I have five choices: 1. Use the porta pottie in the parking lot. Okay, it’s locked, and only people working in the building can use them, but they stink! I will only use it for only if I’m desperate. 2. Use the toilet at the gas station. That is almost worse than the porta pottie-we won’t even go there. 3. Use the toilet at the restaurant behind the building. Okay, that would work, IF I happen to eat there everyday. 4. Go across the street to the county building-that works. Or, finally 5: “Keep it in” until I get to my mother’s house. I guess I could just cross my legs a lot during working hours and not consume any beverages. Lovely. Like my Portuguese friend Maria suggested, I can always hide a commode under my desk. Ha ha ha ha..

Talk about Old School Toilets! Way back in 1971, one of my earliest childhood memories involve seeing my great aunt (Tia Mariquinhas) sitting on a commode. Great memory huh? I was sleeping up there in a loft with my sister, and my mother’s younger cousins, and Tia Mariquinhas was up there with us to watch over us. In the middle of the night, I woke up, and to my utter surprise, there, sitting in the middle of the loft was Tia Mariquinhas sitting on a pot. I hid my head under the covers so she would not see.

It’s been almost a week since I’ve produced an entry! Is it just me, or is this month just flying by very quickly? Last week I was not feeling very well, but today I’m feeling much better. My stomach was doing strange achy things, and this weekend it felt like there was a rubber band tightly strapped around my head. Today, I do feel better.

Today is my daughter’s first day of college courses at her new art university. She is thrilled beyond belief and took the train this morning to downtown San Francisco. San Francisco is a beautiful city, but I’m still feeling a little frightful of the city scene. There are good places, pretty places, and not so pretty places, and scary places. Last week I accompanied her on her one of her orientation days, and at one point we walked a number of blocks through the city. It wasn’t hard to notice all the attention my daughter was getting from various men walking down the street. She was getting the “eye” from the majority of them—from the nicely suited businessmen, to the smelly bum holding a paper bag. It’s not a vision any mother likes to think of, I’m sure. Lizzy of course thought it was all very funny. Apparently, she is used to the attention and it doesn’t bother her one bit. We stopped at a street light, and she asks me if I could adjust the spaghetti straps to her blouse in the back. I really didn’t think it was an appropriate place to do this, because there were men to the side of us, and they were too close to comfort in my opinion. I felt very uncomfortable with it, and told her that we would do it once we got across the street, behind that tree at the next building so no one would see us. Of course Liz thought this all very silly and laughed when I told her about these various men in San Francisco given her second looks.

“Mom, would you be happier if I was ugly?”

Of course I wouldn’t be happier. I just don’t think I’m ever going to grow out of being the worried, protective, nervous mother hen. I may be slowly turning into my mother.

It’s a gloomy, cold Monday, and I have been crossing my legs the whole time while writing this. I think it’s time to head across the street to use the bathroom facilities. Have a wonderful week, y’all!