Real Conversations thanks to the Fun of Bathroom remodeling The Cheap Way.

This true life conversation takes place while I am on my way to San Jose on my day off to price the toilets over there. Everything is about driving to a place and getting the price then finding out I do not know the answer to the important question, such as "What size is your Rough In?" (a good question for a plumber!) and "What level of flushing do you need?" (a question that refers to the amount of flush power to flush down, um, large objects, down the toilet. Level 5 toilets have the pro size flush but are very expensive! i do not know how big our poops are in comparision to flush levels. I feel so ill informed.). And then driving home because the toilet is not in stock and we do not know the rough in yet or the flush power. This follows a day coming home empty handed from the Berkeley salvage yards, ready to go and learn what other important questions I do not know the answers to ("Do you have your spec drawing?" Ha Ha!) at the stone slab place in Watsonville tomorow since the vanity has been ordered on the internet at 6 am this morning for the sale price!

So this is where I am going, dogs left at home to do what they will with the mailman when he comes, and my cell phone rings on the death freeway:

Team Captain: Hi Del, I am talking on Hwy 17!!! (I say this gleefully, because Hwy 17 is a fast death freeway of windyness through the mountain forests and now I am driving and talking with only one hand! I was once admonished for following too close on Hwy 17 and got a ticket and I almost cried because the ChP guy was so not Erik Estrada and just whipped that ticket out to me licketdy split.)

Good Friend Del: What is this you are saying about a porta potty? (Because I love to email people and tell them about my bathroom remodeling and my porta potty!)

Team Captain: God I hate the porta potty. AUGH, I cannot wait to have a porta potty for my one and only bathroom, conveniently situated at the top of the driveway, if only the 20 foot hose works for the truck and the truck is not too wide to back up my skinny, skinny driveway.

Good Friend Del: You can borrow our toilet!

Team Captain: (Here I am now racking brain and making sure to follow the bright red fast car in front of me around the turn. I am driving over the treacherous and windy Hwy 17 and Del has offered to lend me his toilet. How does this work exactly?)

Team Captain: Yes! Your toilet!

Good Friend Del: Our RV toilet we have up by the pool in the pool house. You can take this one! It gets 100 flushes and...

Team Captain: (Here I am counting how many is 100 flushes...how many times a day do we need to flush the toilet? Does this count the plumber flushing too? And friends that come over? I have never counted this before..)

Good Friend Del: ...and it can go in the house...

Team Captain: (Here I am thinking how will I put the RV toilet in the house, in the kitchen? Where the dining room table is? What part of the house fits the RV toilet? If you have never been to my house, suffice to say my house is very, very, very small. Indeed, a tiny, tiny, tiny little house. Mouse house. Fox in a box. We bump into each other all over the house without toilets located in the middle of a living room. )

Good Friend Del: ...and it has hardly any odor...

Team Captaine: (Am thinking now about the odors. Perhaps in the garage would be a private place to not create too much odor?)

Team Captaine: Yes! This sounds perfect! Far better than the porta potty! (But really I am thinking about the odors and this toilet now where and how do i get the sewage from the rv toilet to where it goes?)

Good Friend Del: You just hook it up to the toilet to empty it or take it to the Rv place. (He has read my mind of how does a toilet like this work since you are flushing to, where?)

Team Captain: Yes! I will just take it there! (although I am thinking, man, this whole thing just sucks more and more and more every time I turn around it is just SUCKING!) I can just drive it to the RV place and dispose of..the...Waste. (This is just SUCKING. Why, why why is our bathroom so rotten and we don't even want this house, we want a Ranch)

So we arrange to at some point have a toilet rendevous, I will use Vicki's big truck to get the toilet and bring it to my house. Did I mention how much this is sucking? I know I should be very gracious, of which I am, for having friends who will actually lend me their TOILETS. But such things. That I will be using the hardly any odor toilet in my garage or backyard for possibly how long?? I don't even want to think about it. Daniel the plumber and electric guy working without license or permits says 3 weeks. I think that really means 6ish in real world talk but I don't know. I think this is better than a porta potty? Thanks Del!

Thank god for the macrame.

Scott the roofer came over yesterday when I got home from work. Once he was a hippie living in the house on Portola with a beard and a beautiful hippie girlfriend with braids and naked babies. I learned this from the photos at the hippie party a couple weeks ago. Now he owns a giant roofing company and a 5 acre place in Scotts Valley (5 flat sunny acres, and he used to have ponies for his kids) and he likes to play golf and do contra dancing and likes plants. He has on nice loose Eddie Bauer jeans and those faux suede slip on shoes and a Polo shirt. But he is super friendly and it was actually him that offered to come look at the roof, instead of me begging him. I think. Also he brought over his Jack Russell named Rex that none of my dogs tried to attack or kill and actually let him play with their tennis ball.

And because he is so nice, maybe his son who is a builder guy will do the carpentry for cheap and he will send over some guys from his crews to do the work off the books for cheap and we can have our roof thing done. This is due to the hippie connections from the '70's from Gary. Who never had a beard but did have long hair and a mustache and a van. And macrame. Which he had when I met him (the macrame, long hair, and mustache) and I thought was very exotic.

Scott the roofer used to have another hippie name but it is not said anymore. A lot of people at the hippie party had different names than they did back in the 70's. I was in junior high when they were smoking pot in the meadow at their house which is now a parking lot on Portola by the auto wrecker's. I had roller skates with red and yellow skateboard wheels and really short shorts and loved horses. Now Scott is on his second divorce and seems kind of lonely. The other thing he likes is called contra dancing. This is not to be confused with square dancing and has no costumes! When he started telling me about it, I started thinking about the costumes because I have been thinking how much I might like a square dancing dress and learn to do square dancing. The contra dancing does not have squares. It has lines. There is swinging of partners, but there are No Costumes. This was emphasized several times by him. You wear regular clothes and not cowboy boots. The music is more old time than country western. But most importantly, no costumes.

Hygenic tile, hygenic dogs.

I'll get to agility at the end of this. Sometimes we just veer a little slightly off track. But this was the kind of day it was. Featured here backwards, in order of reversal.

We didn't have to go to the emergency vet! I got Otterpop immobilized and poured a swallow of olive oil down her nose. And she started sneezing violently, and out popped a foxtail. This was after rushing home from halfway through a walk because someone stuck her nose into a foxtail, breathed deep, and sneezed convulsively all the way home until I could get to the oil in hopes of not having to go to the emergency vet for anaesthesia and scoping and yanking it out of her tiny nose.

This was while I was on the pain pills.

Just after Contractor Brian leaving me with the $25,000 bid to gut my bathroom. That would be the $622 per square foot bathroom. When he showed up to deliver the bid, I was on the phone with my dentist.

Who had just called to apologize and make sure I was OK and had gotten home.

Because earlier in the afternoon they drilled out a giant hole in my the space that used to have a front tooth to put the bionic rod in. Apparently this never hurts. It hurt like hell a bunch of times and I would mutter, HURT HURT with my cotton stuffed mutter gob until he would stop and give me more shots. More shots. Susie, assistant to the dentist kept telling me to breathe. They didn't mean for it to hurt but it was terrible. I almost passed out at one point. I had to sit in the chair a long time after it was done because I wasn't sure I could walk. Finally I told myself just cowboy up and get over it. That's how I made it home to the pain killers without passing out. Because a real cowboy surely isn't going to let a little mini mouth bone jackhammer ruin his day.

That was just after I finally surrendered to the vintage tile gods and realized I cannot do the stunning bathroom tile of my dreams and we will have plain and hygenic Deadwood style tile in the manner of the first indoor plumbing ever in Deadwood. No fancy glass color here. White and hygenic like a dental office.

And speaking of hygenic. The AKC took a poll on whether or not mixed breeds dogs shall be allowed to compete in the AKC against purely bred dogs. The AKC has determined that they shall be allowed to compete However, so as not to allow the unwashed mixed breeds to contaminate the more purely bred ones, they shall compete in seperate and slighly less equal classes. And not at any National competitions, local ones only. What a bunch of assholes.

Never did get anywhere on that dialog.

This is where the picture was going to go of Gary tearing up our roof yesterday. But it would seem that my camera or it's memory card or both, don't work anymore. If you could see the photo, you would see that we discovered many other types of beams and eaves and mushroom woods underneath our breezeway roof by tearing away the first layer of mushroom plywood. And termites, oh the termites. And some black insects that buzz. And electrical cords!

How I began tearing up the roof, was I have been thinking about it. And I was working on a project with the pony pictures and I was trying to make the dialog sound like David Milch wrote it. So I was using these Deadwood transcripts to use as a style guide so that Mrs. Lemon and her pony Punch would sound like Cy Tolliver except as a lady pony club leader and Captain Jim would sound like Steve the drunk livery guy and that was way too hard, and I got out the crowbar and just started ripping out panels. And then Gary got appalled and luckily, thanks to Joel Warner and his tool buying methods, we have 2 crowbars and then he was ripping panels and there it went.

And then we went to get margaritas. And then someone has to figure out how to get the vet out to the barn for the horse with the sore foot. And actually the roof looks better torn up than it did not torn up!

The slow timing is worse than the Fast timing.

Ok. We are back to agility. Last night we had agility in the polymer coated dressage mud. Mud filled frisbees for dogs. Mud coated clothing by the end of the night. I wear work boots to run in instead of sneakers. I had a great time with my dogs, and ran Hobbes, the big fast perfect border collie machine. I am learning how to have non sucking timing with him. He wins everything and is super high in Lifetime Achievement Gold points. So I know, if I drop a bar with him or send him off course, I have clearly made the huge error myself, because he is the closest thing to a robot agility dog there is. We did ok. We could have done better. I did let someone else run Ruby, which was cool to watch. She isn't a robot dog yet, but she sure went around fast and did exactly what the handler I loaned her to asked for. Which most of the time was correct. If you give Ruby a piece of cheese at the end, she'll do most anything.

I had one student complain about my class last night. Happens sometimes. Apparently my teaching style makes her dog not a perfect agility dog. I like to teach short drills to work on specific handling moves. We chain them together at the end of class usually. She is, um, an inexperienced handler, and her dog is nervous about everything. Which is a tough combo. But she is nearly ready to kill me because she thinks it's my teaching that makes her dog that way. Anyways. They are kind of held captive in these classes because there aren't tons of agility trainers around. So I'll work with it. I think where I could be more flexible is realizing not everyone in class is going out there to become a polished and capable competitor. Some people just want to run around with their dogs. I feel it is my duty to prepare them for competition, which is what I do with riders. I can't teach shoddy skills, I have a perfection complex. But that doesn't work for everyone. In riding, they can find a new trainer that lets them ride poorly or put troll dolls in the horse's mane or with their thumbs turned down or whatever it is that my somewhat facist personality disallows. In agility, they are a little stuck without driving an hour farther.

Hey there is no contractor here and it's almost 8am! What a luxury and we have not even started ripping things up yet. We haven't even taken out the loan yet. Yesterday Jan the tile lady was here at 7:30 to tell me how expensive the tiling would be and by just making it not as cool and beautiful as I want, I can save lots of money. Thousands of dollars really. So I will have less cool tile but save thousands of dollars.

Also the porta potty research went poorly. Who knew. Here's the thing. It has to go in our front grass. Yes, if we want a porta potty, we have to take apart our front fence, and put it right in the front yard. Not only does this just Suck, theoretically, but the first permit inspector to take a leisurely drive down our street will see the porta potty, know something is up, go snooping around, and give us a big fat red tag for not pulling the super expensive and bullshit permits. So I am now researching the Neat idea of making my garage into a camping bathroom and the Even Neater idea of hauling the non theoretical but very real shit to an RV place on a regular basis. This is going to be such a Fun Adventure!

Bleeding gums of the handheld squirrel noises.

Yesterday, potential bathroom contractor Brian came over. He comes very highly recommended, and told me he specializes in High End bathrooms. I like to think I am a high end person, but I am pretty sure that many would dispute this fact after seeing my high end house decor that includes the beat up toy wood rifle held together with tape that I have hanging from plastic string over the living room mirror, both of which were purchased at yard sales. The rifle came from a yard sale in Tonopah though. So maybe I am more of medium end? I bought my kitchen table at Cost Plus, which I usually avoid since it was likely built by tiny slave children with bleeding fingers and gums but that is at least one store bought item in my house. But not exactly high end.

So he looked around and listened to me a lot. He is a good listener. But then when it's his turn to talk, he thinks a long time, and says what I think are carefully arranged, tactful thoughts. As opposed to when I talk, which doesn't always involve good listening and usually means very unedited thoughts blabbing straight out my mouth. But he seemed a little passive agressive, in a friendly, cheerful way and like maybe he was thinking I was a little weird or crazy or not high end enough. I don't know. He is a contractor, he has to work with nuts all the time. But I'm not sure if I can work with him if he is quietly always thinking nice ways to tell me that my idea sucks or is going to cost a million bucks. It is better to just tell me in regular words!

He was nice enough to crawl under the house to find the gigantic leak of the toilet which for sure means the floor has to be replaced-ka ching-for which the dogs loved him very much. He had a tiny little handheld machine to tell if wires-hey neat there are old knob and tube wires down there! were hot which made beeping squirrel noises, which endeared him very much to Ruby and he is her best friend. I am pretty sure Ruby would vote for contractor brian to remodel the bathroom because of crawling around squirrel noises.

I had a fun whirlwind tour of some stores that sell plumbing and tile and what not. I took notes. I wrote down the very expensive prices that made my bathroom cost twenty thousand dollars! For a Bathroom! Then I wrote down some more prices so I can make my bathroom cost less than that but of course, being a High End person I sure do love that $22 per square foot tile! But I am allowed to get the $5 per square foot kind! I can already tell I do not like bathroom remodeling, and this is while I am not taking showers in the driveway for all the neighbors to see. And having a lovely porta potty in my driveway or if I'm really lucky right on my front grass. I cannot wait, this is going to be Fantastic! And all the while writing checks from the fun and exciting loan for it!

I discovered a neat fact about Team Small Dog blog, which is that many people visit it once on the internet, then never come visit it again! This doesn't exactly hurt my feelings, I know in real life I can have this special effect on people too, so it is cool and special that it is channeled straight over the internet too. I knew the internet was like magic!

Wrong taxidermy is alway soothing to me.

Chainsaw in the yurt.

I would certainly like to live in this cabin. It's in our price range, theoretically, at $740,000. It is on Mt. Madonna road, which is out near my work. Except the part of the road it is on is sort of unmapped, way up over the mountains, looking down a the other side. Hence this photo of the house, in winter.

The directions to get there are sort of unexplainable, and lead me to believe it is a long, challenging jeep road up through the mountains, likely about an hour plus drive from Santa Cruz. I have been up this road once, on an excursion to see "how long it would take to take the back way" home, having no idea there was a whole other universe up there, that is officially, in Santa Cruz. There were waterfalls and yurts tucked into canyons and unpaved sections and thank god we had a map is all I can say. It is the wilderness known as Santa Cruz Mountains and some people actually enjoy living up there. It's a little militia for my tastes, veering more towards huskies on chains secured to large trees and trucks with multiple gas cans bungeed in the back and multiple gun racks in the back window. Too many chainsaws per capita up there.

Normally, at this time, on a Thursday, I would be driving out to practice with the dogs in the morning before work. The unexplained back stabbing pains of yesterday made me think that perhaps this is not a good thing to do today. So we are having another week of no agility, no running, no contacts, no practicing. For an agility blog, this is pretty weak right now. Such is the way my agility life ends up.

The dogs did practice being well behaved and not evil to Tom the roof guy who came over at 8:00 this morning to look at the roof issue that makes most contactors run screaming. That is not getting us any Steeplechase placements though. Tom, being a roofer, has seen it all and remained calm and took photos and will call me in a few days with what will likely be the very expensive estimate. Also to his credit, he likes dogs too and they did not keep barking at him. Timmy likes all contractor guys, so that is not an issue. Ruby hates them until she comes out, sees they are not coming to chainsaw us to bits and rob the house of all the rotting taxidermy and is fine. Otterpop pretty much does what I command her to because she is under my power so if she doesn't take Ruby's lead, she is fine. Tom the roof guy even said she is cute, which is something Otterpop doesn't hear a lot.

OtterPop with Timmy, before her new collar. She is disturbed. Timmy is zen.

OtterPop with Ruby after new collar. Well behaved, like little ponies.