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Posts tagged ‘Toilet’

Aug 5

38 Comments

My Father The Fountainhead

Happy Birthday, Dad!!!

Twilight cast long shadows across my parent’s back yard in Florence, South Carolina, as we sat on the screened porch, sipped Perrier and watched the sprinkler arc. Forward and back. Forward and back. A watery path that dotted the surface of the bird feeder and my father’s Man Shed.

Linda, that sprinkler better not be wetting my building. I don’t need no termites out there. Go move it.

Now Roy, if you’re so worried about that sprinkler and some termites, you go move it.

You mean to tell me you’re gonna make me get up on the eve of my birthday and move that thing? Huh? You see how she treats me?

Don’t look at me, Dad. I’m not moving it.

Forward and back. Forward and back.

When we decided to leave, Dad disappeared. The light blinked on in his Man Shed and was extinguished.

DAD!! If you don’t come on, we’re going to leave without saying goodbye! DA-AAAAD!!!!!

He’s out there peeing behind that building, Andra.

WHAT???

I’m telling you, that’s what he’s doing.

WHY would he…….oh, dear God. There he is. His shirt is untucked and everything. WERE YOU PEEING BEHIND THE SHED, DAD???

HUH??? (Cackling laughter.)

I told you, Andra. Your daddy does that all the time.

Is this true, Dad? IS IT?

Well, I have to do something about those termites. I don’t want ‘em gettin’ in my shed.

I tell you, Andra. I can’t even stand to cut the grass back there. It stinks so bad. I make him do that part.

(Honestly, HOW did I spawn from these two people???)

Yep. I hafta pee all along the bottom of the wall. It kills them termites. It’s your mother’s fault for wetting my building with the sprinkler.

Ew, Dad. STOP. Don’t hug me. DON’T DO IT. Mom, can I take a shower before I go?

Jun 28

31 Comments

No. 1 Tinkle: Signature Lounge at John Hancock Center Chicago

A bar was the inspiration for this wacky series, and a bar will finish it. We were in Chicago for MTM to reconnect with Hanno Weber, one of his architecture mentors. Hanno and his partner, Kathleen Hess, invited us to their apartment for dinner on our last night in the city.

But, WHY do we have to go to a crummy old apartment to eat? I’d rather go stand in line at Frontera Grill.

Their apartment is in a Mies building, Andra. You HAVE to see it.

Why? WHY? His buildings all look the same. A bunch of tall glass and steel. You’ve dragged me to almost all of them while we’ve been here, and I’ve had a hard time differentiating one from the rest of them.

*Sigh*

The doorman directed us to the correct floor in the Mies building on Lake Shore Drive. It was like popping popcorn between my ears  as we ascended in the elevator. I gritted my teeth and hoped I would get to utter one sentence during a dinner party with three design people. It had the potential to drag on for hours. And HOURS.

I ended up highjacking the whole conversation with my boorish charm, lecturing Hanno about the perils of not running an architecture practice like a business for most of dinner. We volleyed back and forth with heated fervor. At the end of the evening, he smiled at MTM and proclaimed that he liked me.

Kathleen insisted that if we did nothing else in the time we had left, we had to visit the bar atop the John Hancock Center. Because you MUST visit the bathroom.

?

The building was a short walk from their apartment. More popping ears, and we were dumped into the Signature Lounge, a packed establishment with the Chicago skyline twinkling everywhere we looked.

I’m going to the bathroom.

Now? Andra, we just got here. You haven’t even had a drink yet.

Just order me anything. I’ll be right back.

I pushed open a door to the ladies room and staggered. While the bar was teeming with people jostling for a chance at a window seat, the bathroom was empty. AND IT HAD THE SAME SHIMMERING CITY VIEW. Finally, a drinking spot that understood the relationship between bar and toilet, moving the patron from raucous activity to a private, quiet view. I was tempted to leave the stall door open while I tinkled, just to take it all in. I was gone so long that MTM thought I had flushed myself down the toilet.

It was tempting to stay in a place where they really know how to treat a girl who’s gotta go.

This post is part of the series My Top 10 Tinkles. If this is your first visit to this urinary extravaganza, please click here to start the series at the beginning. Thank you for reading my blog, for sharing it, and for spending time here.

Jun 28

56 Comments

Can You Hit The Spot? Guess the Number 1 Tinkle.

DISCLAIMER: This photo is in no way related to the winning tinkle.

Before I announce the winning tinkle in this list of urinary awesomeness, a contest is in order. We’ve visited three continents on this journey to find the perfect toilet. Outhouses. Airplanes. Nothing has been overlooked.

Please guess the location of the Number 1 Tinkle in your comment today. I will give a special, place-oriented prize to the Reader who guesses the exact location of the Number 1 Tinkle. If no one divines the precise tinkle spot, the winner will be selected according to the following criteria:

  • One point for the right continent
  • Three points for the right country
  • Ten points for the right city
  • Three points for the right type of place (hotel, bar, house, apartment, the dirt, etc.)

If we have a tie based upon the above point system, I will draw a winner at random.

Comments placed after 1:11PM Eastern Standard Time will be disqualified, because the correct answer will be posted at that time.

To encourage you to try, Dear Reader, I will give you one tinkly hint. The winning locale is less than one mile from a spot that’s already been featured in this series.

Good luck!

This post is part of the series My Top 10 Tinkles. If this is your first visit to this urinary extravaganza, please click here to start the series at the beginning. Thank you for reading my blog, for sharing it, and for spending time here.

Jun 27

42 Comments

No. 2 Tinkle: Hotel on Rivington New York City

The view from the throne at the Rivington

MTM and I wandered into the lobby of New York‘s Hotel on Rivington to claim our Cheap-o Special for Poor People. Situated on the Lower East Side, the building is a glass tower amidst seven and eight story buildings, and it has windows in the shower. We could never afford to stay above the seventh floor, meaning I’ve probably showered in front of countless strangers I’ll never see again. I prepared myself to be an exhibitionist as I waited with our bag.

The lady behind the desk stuttered. This NEVER happens. 

What? MTM shot a me a look that conveyed concern. Did they screw up our booking? Did we even HAVE a room?

Um. Ah. You’ve been UPGRADED. To the Owner’s Suite. She shuffled around the desk like MTM was someone REALLY important, summoned a valet to carry our solo bag and escorted us to the seventeenth floor of the building.

The door slid open into shimmering luxury. Half the seventeenth floor was devoted to the Owner’s Suite, with the entire side of the building sporting a lean balcony that faced Midtown. The master bathroom occupied one corner, with a soaking tub that gave a glimpse of the Williamsburg Bridge. The toilet was front and center, negating the need for reading materials. One could just sit and gawp at the view.

With so many possible activities at our fingertips, we ran around the corner, ordered crepes and hauled our derrieres back up to the room. Why roam around the canyons of New York when you’ve been given the unexpected gift of gazing at it for one whole night?

A postscript: We paid the booked rate for our original room. The next day, our flight was canceled, leaving us stuck in New York for another night. We went back to the Rivington to book a cheap-o and found out the Owner’s Suite went for $2,500 a night.

They offered it to us for $1,250.

We didn’t take it.

This post is part of the series My Top 10 Tinkles. If this is your first visit to this urinary extravaganza, please click here to start the series at the beginning. Thank you for reading my blog, for sharing it, and for spending time here.

Jun 24

39 Comments

No. 5 Tinkle: Chamber 370 at Hotel Gault Montreal

For once, I’m glad I took the advice of the New York Times travel section. We booked our first trip to Hotel Gault in Old Montreal in December 2003. The place had just opened, and the NY Times gave it an orgiastic review.

That wasn’t why we went.

We spent Christmas 2003 in Chamber 370 because the hotel won several design awards that MTM the Architect recognized as being Worthy of His Patronage. Plus, he missed freezing his tuckus off during Wisconsin winters. A pilgrimage to blowing snow and freezing my Southern nostrils shut would be a good indicator of whether I would make a suitable spouse.

Fluffy flecks of white blew around the window of the plane as we landed on a charcoal grey day. Our cab driver told us in Franglais that more snow was anticipated for that evening as he slid to a stop in front of a granite building on a side street. Hotel Gault. We had arrived.

I didn’t know how to walk in anything wintry, so I slipped and slid from the car to the door with the help of the valet. MTM’s face lit up when we walked into a sparse dreamworld of lobby design. Weird furniture. Strange art. IKEA glasses. Stainless steel.

I can’t WAIT to see the room!!!!! a giddy MTM squealed as we waited for the elevator.

I hope we have a real bed, not one of those hard-as-a-brick modernist/minimalist numbers I harrumphed to myself.

The door to Chamber 370 yawned open to reveal more stark furnishings: a bed, a couple of night tables with those weird stainless steel architect-y lamps on them, a big built in desk/closet, more crazy chairs and a microscopic table.

There’s no hope for the bathroom I cried, as I heaved back a floor-to-ceiling sliding door to inspect my throne for almost a week. Would it be stark? Sparse? Would there even BE one?

I gasped as I stared at the Inner Sanctum of Urinary Awesomeness. A gigantic sink with a massive shelf to hold all my products. Fluffy robes and towels. A shower stall for two with water pressure that was perfection. A hidden compartment for the toilet. A bathtub where I spent part of one whole day soaking, adding more hot water when needed to maintain my shriveled, happy state. And, the floor was heated. No sitting on the toilet with frozen tootsies because it was minus 20 outside.

We’ve spent nine Christmases in that bathroom. This year, we plan to make it ten.

This post is part of the series My Top 10 Tinkles. If this is your first visit to this urinary extravaganza, please click here to start the series at the beginning. Thank you for reading my blog, for sharing it, and for spending time here.

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