Toilet Humour

Is it wrong to be utterly impressed by a flushing toilet? To feel completely satisfied by the 'shushing' whirlpool behind you as you bounce a door that never quite shuts behind you.
After months of touting buckets of shower water back and forth from the 'not-quite-outhouse' (a toilet squeezed into a cramped tin-walled alleyway that separates house from shed) I'm inordinately pleased about being about being able to leave behind my business to go get on with business?

Now the shower water runs straight onto the almond, mulberry and fig trees and we've seen new fruit as a result of this new liquid bounty.

Sometimes I fear I really do aim too low.

I should put this all in context: Over the years I've become the queen of 'making do' - not quite enough money to keep up the maintenance work, not enough know-how to do it myself, not enough confidence to give it a try and too much pride to ask someone else to help.

This was all exacerbated in my first marriage where HusbandNumber1 was confident he could 'knock it together' himself. Now, to be fair, his intentions were good and today, with the help of YouTube and smart phones, I'm sure he's a whiz in the world of unblocking cracked clay pipes. But, let's just say that that marriage was a bit of a testing ground for both of us and occasionaly we bombed.

I know this because when MyMan talked about pulling up floors at the Shouse I could see my father's face start to twitch. He remembers the last time he was called in to rescue a damsel in distress whose husband had left her, mid-renovations, with a mortgage she couldn't afford and floors and walls she could see through.

As a result, I think MyMan is haunted by an imaginary deadline any time he begins work at the Shouse. When we discovered the leak in our bedroom ceiling was actually some previous tenant's bucket finally overflowing inside the roof, he was up on the lichen-licked tiles before the rain had cleared with a tarp and weighting tires - which turned into shiny new capping one weekend and a paycheque later.

Upon receiving the good news that his 12-year-old daughter was coming to live with us, it took just a weekend and two late nights to re-stump and replace the floors of what has been 'the kids' room' for more than 40 years and at least three families. One ex-tenant - who has children of his own today - tells us that he and his sister would often joke that with both their beds against walls and the floor peaking up between them, they never had to worry about falling out of bed in the night.

But all these little, well let's call them idiosynchracies, just make me love the Shouse more. I feel like an almost-20-year-old again starting out into the world on my adventures.

At the same time, my almost-40-year-old self is reassured by looking over at the clear stretch of land in front of us, with its sea views and connected utilities, knowing that when the adventure wears thin we've got a plan.

I love a plan. I can keep climbing over most hurdles if I have the horizon in sight. Now, if I can just keep up with MyMan and his deadlines we'll all get there pretty damn soon.