Why Isn’t Anyone Doing Anything About My Bathroom?

Seriously, people, the whole bathroom reflects poorly on me, my lifestyle, my family, and yes, even the cats.

I can’t show you the linoleum (it violates the Geneva Convention), but I would if I could. I didn’t even know they made linoleum in the Dark Ages, but apparently they did. How else to explain the Scenes from the Inquisition motif on the bathroom floor?

And the bathtub! You’d expect, in a house over a hundred years old, that it would be some deep, claw-footed canoe of a tub, wouldn’t you? That it would be gleaming white, steeped in turn-of-the-century history (Teddy Roosevelt Bathed Here!) and surrounded by oils in colored bottles and glowing candles of all sizes?

Would you believe a shallow, plastic remnant of the 70s once bathed in by Garrison Keillor’s cousin’s girlfriend and ringed by cats?

Shoot. It’s probably not even real plastic. It’s probably imitation plastic! Ha ha! The last people to upgrade the bathroom couldn’t afford real plastic, so they put in faux plastic!

You know, to be fair, it’s not the lousy cheap tub. It’s not even the not-quite-kitsch linoleum or the fact that you can reach the tub from the toilet (a story unto itself) but the fact that it’s all contained in a room the size of a pretty nice telephone booth. Two people couldn’t fit in that room at the same time – not that that comes up much! – and a group shower? Forget about it. You can just take that kind of action to the community center, where it belongs.

Oh, I don’t know. I suppose that eventually I will get around to remodeling/updating the bathroom. Until then, if you ever need to use the toilet, the tub, and the sink all at once – or have a fear of open spaces – you just let me know. I’ll clear a spot on the towel rack for you.