A cautionary tale (with whisky, astonishing quantities of used tissues, and a really disgusting Issue…)
I just wanted to check in with all of you and let you know why I dropped off the face of the earth. As I’ve mentioned before, last year we bought a fixer-upper cottage on an island off the coast of Scotland. I pictured my entire family, gathered together around the fire as we all enjoyed our first holiday in our beautiful traditional island cottage. [NOTE: those who have already done house renovations, especially in rural Scotland, can just stop that sniggering right now. It’s so not attractive…] But right from the beginning there was a gap—think Grand Canyon—between my dream and my reality. I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Since moving to Glasgow, we’d heard plenty of tales of “small” repair or decorating jobs that went on for years. (!) Our new Island neighbors would suck in their cheeks and look away when I confidently predicted how long the initial work would take.
My dream:
I would spend a few intense weeks getting painting and basic repairs taken care of, add a bathroom on the same floor as the bedrooms, and we’d celebrate the holidays in our freshly-painted-but-otherwise-fabulously-traditional cottage. I even had a budget, one which represented a judicious investment from our savings, but would allow us to still plan for retirement years full of comfort, family, and travel to exotic places.
My reality:
It’s been six months, during most of which the dog and I lived on the sunporch. (The unheated sunporch. In Scotland, which doesn’t promise actual sun after that one day in September.) We removed several hundred years of regrettable wallpaper and decorating decisions. We hauled out the fake-wood kitchen bits except for the charming vintage range cooker, and we had everything painted a nice plain white. That was the easy part. Too easy. We got cocky. Why should we just carpet the floors? Our traditional house obviously needed wood floors everywhere, except for the even-more-traditional parts that needed stone floors. [Curse you, Fired Earth Tiles, for putting your Glasgow showroom right where I would regularly pass your Imperial Slate display.] Off went an order to the floor guys, while I told my rapidly dwindling retirement savings that we wouldn’t need to do that much traveling when we retired because we’d at home enjoying our wood and stone floors.
Then the electrician showed me the existing wiring (by cutting open the walls and floors). It had apparently been installed when Queen Victoria sat the throne, and looked like handfulls of dead spiders. Really scary dead spiders. Okay, obviously that would have to be replaced, and our retirement budget would just need to adjust to allowing us to visit exotic restaurants instead of exotic lands.
Then the charming vintage range cooker (around which we had planned and installed a tasteful but affordable kitchen) broke. No problem, said the manufacturer. Even though it was many decades old, they had a company licensed to do repairs. No problem said the cheerful person at the repair company. Just send a big bunch of money and they would dispatch an engineer immediately. I sent the money—three months ago. I’d be a lot more depressed about this, except we ran into a few other little things that have put off our move into the house with the tasteful kitchen built around the completely useless decorative object formerly known as the range cooker.
For example, we noticed that there was no heat in the bedrooms. That might have been fine for hardy Scots, but we are non-hardy Americans. Off went an order to the plumbers, who installed many radiators, and many miles of pipes to supply them. My budget now resembled a really annoyed honey-badger, snarling and gobbling more of our retirement savings. No problem, I assured the remaining savings. Who needs meals in exotic restaurants when we can sit on the wood floors in our nice warm house and eat beans?
How I picture our crazyass honey badger renovation budget ripping our adorable little retirement savings to shreds [WARNING: not a good metaphor for those about to sit down to breakfast…]
Then the plumber told us that not only was it impossible to install a bathroom on the bedroom floor without having the toilet waste pipe go through the middle of the ground floor entry hall, but the family bathroom that did exist—at the far end of the house, down a half flight of stairs, and confusingly located right next to the guest bathroom—had an Issue.
The Issue, it turned out, is called a macerator. No, it isn’t the title of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. It’s a toilet attachment they put in so they wouldn’t have to run a toilet waste line through the downstairs hallway, and it sounds like a 747 engine preparing for takeoff. But that sound is actually preferable to when it doesn’t make a sound, which (we soon learned) was the sound it did not make the times it silently spewed several inches of liquidized poo back into the shower, the bath, the sink, and frequently, the floor.
“Don’t worry,” I assured the whimpering remains of our retirement savings after the honey-badger bathroom-repair budget was through with it. “We’ll just tape the loo closed and pretend it doesn’t exist. After all, we do have a teeny bathroom on the ground floor. Of course, that bathroom had a rolling door that broke when it was removed for painting and is awaiting the new door track which should be arriving any year now. Given the crowds of carpenters, painters, plumbers, and floor guys roaming the halls at any given time, going to the bathroom became an exciting adventure.
Finally, it was December and I had to face reality. We made a break for London, where the UMAG (Universe’s Most Adorable Grandbaby) shared smiles, first steps, and the chest-rot virus making the rounds at daycare. Then the Hub headed across the Atlantic for a round of conferences and I headed back to the fixer-upper armed with two rolls of vintage fifties wallpaper from eBay and a rapidly-developing sore throat.
And that’s when I remembered the Superpowers of January. [I’ll bet you were thinking “She mentioned superpowers in the title and then completely forgot about them. But I’m a professional writer—that was just foreshadowing.] Consider:
- The Hub’s January superpower is to somehow sense when to leave the country just before catastrophe strikes. Over the years, if a child went to the hospital, the Hub would be in Spain. If I had to pack and move houses, he was in England. If I fell and knocked myself out while painting the kitchen, he was in Italy. This time I was only starting to cough as his plane lifted off. But by the time he was halfway across the ocean, I was running a fever. Back in our little Scottish Island house, I wandered around in a daze. (Said daze might or might not have had something to do with my mixing cold and flu meds with industrial-strength hot toddys). I stumbled around the house, wondering who had left the mountains of disgusting used tissues lying everywhere. Luckily, the dog maintained a firm grip on the essentials even though I was only occasionally with it. Now and then I would wonder why I was out in the garden in my pajamas, and notice her running around happily attending to doggie business. Or I would find myself in the kitchen filling her food bowl as I considered hazy memories of doing the same thing several times that day already while the dog burped happily. At one point I woke up from a wonderful dream in which the teeny loo was miraculously decorated with the gorgeous fifties-vintage wallpaper I’d been afraid to install because it was the old-fashioned kind that needed wallpaper paste. (Hey, I’ve seen that I Love Lucy episode. I know how that turns out…) Then I stumbled into the loo—an easy stumble care of its doorless state—and looked around. Somehow I actually HAD installed the wallpaper. Or else somebody had broken into my house and done a damn good job of installing it for me. Or wait…was one of the strips upside down? No, actually two were. Well, it was easy to redo those two bits. I’ll just always wonder how the rest of it was actually accomplished.
- Turns out that the floor/carpenter/plumber/rest of people who were always around when I wanted to use the doorless loo also have a January superpower. Apparently they acquired the ability to bend the fabric of time and space to render them completely invisible and untraceable from mid-December to mid-January. So for the past weeks, the house has contained only the dog, the occasionally conscious me, piles of used hot toddy mugs, and disturbing mountains of snotty tissues and empty flu med containers. And whoever broke in and wallpapered the teeny loo.(List of suspects: invisible January superpowered-decorators, the dog, or me in a hot toddy-fueled fever daze. We’ll never know.)
- But I have a January superpower too. Even though I’m still running a temperature, and my chest makes a cheerful little whistling noise whenever I breathe in or out, and my ears are so stuffed up that I’ve resorted to lip reading as communication, I can banish pneumonia when my January superpower is invoked. All it took was one message from my daughter saying she needed some surgery and could I come out to be with her, and I. Was. Cured. Okay, maybe it took a day where I ran around the after-hours clinics in Glasgow until I found a doctor ready to prescribe industrial-strength antibiotics. Maybe I still can’t hear too well. Maybe the dog is the one with the flair for wallpaper installation despite her opposable thumbless state. Maybe I’m leaving behind a house with doorless loos. But I’m on a plane heading for New York because that’s what mothers do.
My January superpower? I’m a mom. What’s yours?
Mick Canning said:
Hope it all goes well, Barb. And hope that plane has plenty of duty free hot toddies!
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barbtaub said:
Ah, but I’m on Mom-duty now. No toddies for the duration.
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Mick Canning said:
Oh dear…
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Zoe the Fabulous Feline said:
Stuff night,ares are made of! Hopefully it’ll all soon be just a memory, when you’re sitting in your beautiful sun porch and enjoying the sun that bright September day. :-). And best wishes for your daughter’s surgery.
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barbtaub said:
September seems a long way off, but thanks for your good wishes!
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shelleywilson72 said:
Hope everything goes well for your daughter, Barb, and you feel better really soon. With any luck the air conditioning on the plane will suck out your virus and distribute it evenly among the other passengers (that’s normally how I end up with these things!!) 😉
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barbtaub said:
I usually get the germ du jour from flights too. Kind of embarrassing to realize I’m the plague spreader.
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Sue Vincent said:
Hope all goes well and you get well, Barb x
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barbtaub said:
Oh I’m already practically cured. I have to be…I’m the mom!
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Sue Vincent said:
I know that one. Hold out for the toddys 😉
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Cathy said:
Fingers crossed the introduction to your new house will take a huge turn for the better. Hope you’re feeling better, Barb, and all goes well with your daughter’s surgery.
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barbtaub said:
Thanks so much Cathy!
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linda1633 said:
LOL! YOUR STORY SOUNDS JUST LIKE WHAT I FEAR WILL HAPPEN IF I TRY TO CHANGE ANYTHING IN MY NEW HOME. SO I LIVE WITH ODD, GAUDILY FLOWERED WALLPAPER WITH ANGEL CUTOUTS IN MY LIVING ROOM., GREEN AND YELLOW WALLPAPER IN MY BEDROOM, OFF COLORED SHAG CARPETING AND SO ON. I’VE THOUGHT OF HOW NICE IT WOULD LOOK WITHOUT IT, BUT I’M NOT WILLING TO PUT UP WITH THE PROBLEMS YOU’VE DESCRIBED.
And I love hearing about your hot toddies. My grandmother used to give us honey, whiskey, and lemon – but without the warm water. I’d always thought it was her method of getting a break from visiting grandchildren. Who knew it actually did have medicinal qualities?
Good luck with your home repairs. Apparently, Scottish workmen and American workmen have a lot in common. I find that you end up convincing yourself that the house was just fine the way it was. Good luck…I’d take up praying for you, but I really believe that God created remodeling as a severe test of faith.
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barbtaub said:
I’m not sure if the hot toddy is medicinal or if you just don’t care as much about being ill. But I do know that nobody deserves angel-cutout wallpaper and green shag carpet. That’s just so wrong.
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Rosie Amber said:
Oh crikey Barb, what a story, good luck.
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barbtaub said:
Thanks Rosie!
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noelleg44 said:
As usual, Barb, you make the worst of times laughable. I’m so glad your sense of humor didn’t drown in snot. On the serious side, I can really empathize with you – getting things done here in the South must be on a par with Scotland – we still have black plastic bags taped to the ceiling in the family room and an unusable bathroom after FOUR months. My the gods of restoration be on your side!
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barbtaub said:
Before we started, everyone warned us that we would spend twice as much money in ten times the amount of time we expected. So far, that’s proving optimistic. Thanks for your good wishes. The thing I keep thinking about at each step of the way, is that someday somebody will be ripping out everything we’ve spent so much time and money on, while asking anyone who will listen what I could POSSIBLY have been thinking when I made those choices. A humbling thought…
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Danny the Dog said:
Who’s looking after the dog?
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barbtaub said:
As usual, Danny, you get straight to the heart of things. I may have no idea what I’ve packed in the suitcase I threw together. I may not have remembered to cancel all the appointments and things I have scheduled for the next week or so. And I may or may not have left the iron turned on. BUT the first thing I did was call Derek, dog walker extraordinaire, and send Peri for a sleepover with her collie pals at his house. I’ve already gotten several photos and updates of her having fun while I’m gone. But despite all evidence to the contrary, I am very certain that she will make me suffer for abandoning her and pour on the guilt-trip when I get back.
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ravenhawks magazine said:
Hot Toddies sound grand but the rest sounds like a real pain, hoping you are finding New York better and when you get back to your cottage more miracles will have happened.
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barbtaub said:
Thanks so much! And yes, I think whoever invented the hot toddy deserves a Nobel!
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ravenhawks magazine said:
Yes they do.
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alisonewilliams said:
Safe trip Barb – hope you’re feeling better soon too 🙂 xx
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barbtaub said:
Thanks Alison!
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Claire Fullerton said:
If nothing else good comes of it, you have a very engaging story! Slainte to you!
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barbtaub said:
Daughter is doing well, so everything good is coming already! Thanks so much for your good wishes.
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Elyse said:
Oh dear, Barb. I wish you’d contacted me before you bought that second house. I could have shown you my retirement fund.
Feel better and enjoy your superpower. Mine is creating the stuff that ends up in that macerator. And I have it not just in January!
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barbtaub said:
That macerator, I promise you, is retired. Your superpower is safe to bring to Scotland! I can’t do a thing about your retirement fund though…
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S.K. Nicholls said:
Wow! You’ve really been run through the mill. Hope there is a happy ending to this story and you manage to get it all done and settled before Spring. We’ve missed you terribly…if that’s any consolation. I would absolutely fall apart if I didn’t have my hubby gluing me back together from time to time.
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barbtaub said:
Oh, it will definitely be done by Spring. I’m just not sure WHICH spring…
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Jessie said:
Best of luck with the Mom superpower job, I hope everything goes well and there is a hot toddy waiting at the end of it all!
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barbtaub said:
No hot toddies while I’m on Mom-duty. Thanks for those good wishes.
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Ritu said:
Oh Barb ! Poor you!.
Hope you feel better soon and that the decorating fairies have been around when you arrive back home.
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barbtaub said:
I’m already WAY better, but I have serious doubt about those decorating fairies…
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Ritu said:
Lol!!!!!! Especially in the snow!!!
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Mary Smith said:
Oh, Barb, I hope everything goes well for your daughter and that you feel better soon. Glad your sense of humour has not deserted you even in these most trying of times.
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barbtaub said:
Surgery went well, and I’ve found LOTS more to laugh about. All good.
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Mary Smith said:
Looking forward to laughing along with you!
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Kassandra Lamb said:
Laughing out loud as usual as you makes your plight seem so amusing. But having renovated a couple of fixer-uppers myself, I totally understand what you and your budget are going through. It does get done eventually (although you end up giving up on some things, such as 2nd bathrooms) and then you can relax and enjoy life again, and try to rebuild your savings.
Hope all continues to go well with your daughter and that both of you are topnotch healthy in no time.
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barbtaub said:
My daughter is doing well so none of the rest matters!
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Kassandra Lamb said:
AMEN
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TanGental said:
I love how hope and experience coalesce in a doorless bathroom. At law school one of the examples we were given of unreasonable behaviour that justified divorce was removing a toilet door for more than a week. You could well have a defence to homicide there so well done on not hacking anyone into haggis sized bits. Hope the mumming goes smoothly and you are back to suffer for our entertainment. Just remember Barb, your (adopted) country needs you!
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barbtaub said:
It was all happening in the States so I had to transition from Mumming to Momming. But daughter is doing well and I have a vetted excuse for doorless-loo homicide. Life is perfect!
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TanGental said:
I’ll defend you Barb…
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patriciasands said:
Here’s to super-moms! But your other January (or choose any other month, because they all apply) superpower is creating laughter. Yes, I admit I did laugh out loud (I apologize) more than once. You. Are. Too. Funny. Thank you for that!
Can’t wait for the next instalment. Is it appropriate to still wish you a Happy New Year?
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