The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

So I’ve been working from home this past week and it looks like I’ll be there for a while longer. I don’t mind—I’ve worked from home before and I know how to pace myself and structure my day. I’m not going to lie and say that it’s been an easy transition—changes in routine have always posed a challenge to me. In fact, any kind of change can throw me into a tizzy—take, for example, Daylight Savings Time:

Ken: So I went around the house and changed all the clocks…
Me: What do you mean, ALL the clocks?!
Ken: I set all the clocks to the right time. It took me ages to fix the ones in the downstairs bathroom. There’s like fifteen of them.
Me: YOU CHANGED ALL THE TIMES ON MY VINTAGE CLOCK COLLECTION?
Ken: Hahaha. Just kidding.
Me: If only that was even remotely funny, KEN.

Because the whole point of the collection is that each clock presents the time when it finally stopped for good—it’s PERFORMANCE ART, KEN. And then the other day, Ken decided that he wanted to fix the ceiling in one of our guest bedrooms because there had been a leak a couple of years ago that caused a seam to bulge. I insisted that he cover everything with drop sheets because of the plaster and whatnot, assuming that he would leave everything just the way it was underneath. BUT NO. It turned out that he took everything off every surface and put things randomly in drawers, and when it came time to put it all back, I just about lost my mind until I remembered that I had photographs of the room and could recreate it exactly as it was.

As you may remember, I’ve written extensively, maybe even obsessively, about the bathroom stalls at work and which one is my current favourite at any given time. So, in honour of working from home, and being able to keep things as normal as possible, I present to you the bathrooms in my house in order of least to most favourite. (You’ll notice that they all have toilet paper. I was at the grocery store yesterday, and there was a skid of bulk TP that came 30 rolls to the pack. The limit per customer was 2, and there were actually people carrying 60 f*cking rolls of toilet paper home. How much do you sh*t, anyway? I stood there for a moment, contemplating the skid, but didn’t buy any because I currently have lots, and I really hope I’m not going to be pissed off at myself in a month. Anyway).

This bathroom is nice, but it’s narrow and far away from my current office space. Also, like Stall 1 at work, a ghost lives in it. This is the same ghost that opens the cupboard doors in the adjacent bedrooms. Also, you can see there’s a small sliding door in the wall—there was a vent pipe inside that led into the closet in the bedroom directly behind the bathroom. Last year, we were cleaning out the bedroom closet and realized the pipe just went directly from the bathroom into the closet floor and stopped there, so we pulled it out and discovered the most bizarre collection of things under the floor of the closet that someone in the past had thrown down the pipe in the bathroom, obviously not realizing that it wasn’t a MAGICAL pipe. There was a pair of boy’s underwear, a love letter written to the son of the previous occupant (“Hi Jordan, If you lik me, rite back” with a heart drawn in crayon. I guess he didn’t “lik” her since he threw the letter into the magic pipe) and a couple of condom wrappers, so maybe he changed his mind at some point? The weirdest thing was about 9 pairs of old panty hose, and I can’t even begin to explain THAT, having not owned a pair of panty hose for over twenty years, long before we bought this house.

This bathroom is very utilitarian, housing the laundry facilities as well. However, the knee-to cabinet ratio is a little tight for me. This is “Ken’s bathroom”. It has a nice shower, but I’m a bath girl. The last time I used the shower was the day I ran a gas-powered pressure sprayer over my foot. Ken carried me screaming into the shower to get the dirt out of my flayed toes because it was the closest bathroom to the incident. So it’s very handy in a medical emergency.

This is the bathroom where I keep the infamous vintage clock collection. I wrote a while ago about clocks, so you’ll remember that I have a lot of old clocks that don’t work scattered around the house, but this bathroom is where space and time converge. Also, I made that toilet paper holder out of an old piano stool base and a curtain rod, and at the time, people thought it was very ostentatious, but given the fact that toilet paper is currently as rare as rhodium, I think it’s a fitting tribute. I like this bathroom well enough, and it’s close to the back family room where we watch movies. You can dash to the toilet and still hear the dialogue if you keep the door slightly open. Much better acoustics than a movie theatre bathroom and much cleaner.

This is MY bathroom, and it’s the best one in the house as far as I’m concerned. It’s like Stall 5 at work, if Stall 5 was never used by anyone but me. It’s technically an ensuite for the master bedroom but it belongs to ME. It also has a balcony that you can sit out on in the summer, which is random for a bathroom, but this whole house has been reconfigured several times over the last 114 years, and apparently the bathroom used to be a kitchen when the upstairs of the house was 2 apartments. Ken and I just renovated it a couple of months ago. Originally, the walls were covered with giant damask roses, which I loved but which Ken CONSTANTLY complained about, so I finally gave in when we found all those doors for free at the side of the road and he proposed that we create a wall of doors. My favourite thing is the stained glass window panel we just installed, and which I promised to take a picture of, because last week when I introduced you all to Captain John Crapper, my friend Bryntin from O4FS wondered why the toilet was in the corner, and a couple of people asked to see the whole room. So here you are. In my favourite bathroom. A constant in a sea of change.

Also, if you’re wondering why on earth we have FOUR bathrooms for two people, let me just say that our house is in a very small town far from the city, and when we bought it over 15 years ago (when Kate was still at home), the price was incredibly low compared to what we could have gotten for the same money in town. Once we both retire, we’re hoping to turn it into a bed and breakfast, or a writing/photography retreat. As long as nobody moves my stuff or changes my clocks, it’ll be great.

78 thoughts on “The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same”

  1. I’m one of those people who thinks having just two bathrooms should qualify you for Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. I’ve literally never lived (or regularly visited… i.e., grandparents houses) in a house that had more than just one bathroom. And when you realize I grew up as a boy in a house with five females, you might wonder how me or my Dad ever got to use the bathroom at all!!!

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  2. Bryntin says:

    With ‘bog’ being slang for a toilet here, you being happy about the number of bathrooms you have and my having been giving you the sort of anagrammatic name Ms Danglybog recently, I may have to change it (by the small addition of an extra ‘a’ and ‘s’) to ‘Glad many bogs’…

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    • I think the number of bathrooms came about because it was a rooming house for many years. At one point, the owner, a lovely widow named Mrs. Baxter, took in the town doctor and there was a doctor’s office in the room where I compose my humble offerings. Might also account for the ghost–maybe it was a former patient! And I’ll take whatever nickname you see fit to bestow on me:-)

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      • Bryntin says:

        Oh good. Unfortunately for you, it probably won’t be Player One…

        I love that sort of history to a house, our own has a humble two bathrooms, one of which is more like a spider breeding centre where you could probably spin a few of your own sheets of paper from the webs while you’re um.. waiting…

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  3. You really like your clocks don’t you? Even a clock bath mat 😳 I always think humans are like clocks because one day our ticker stops too. Loved the tour everything looks gorgeous.

    P.s. you would have qualified for two packs of toilet rolls with all those bathrooms.
    P.p.s have you ever folded up your laundry whilst sat on the toilet 🚽😉

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  5. If you ever turn your place into a retreat and if I ever stay there—a lot of ifs I know—I would want the bathroom with the balcony, because I like sitting out on balconies with a cup of coffee while I work. That would be incredibly convenient, but I wouldn’t want to deprive you of your favorite spot.
    The vintage clock collection is very cool, but what really stands out for me is how close the toilets are to showers. If you run out of TP that could be handy but I won’t say any more.

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  8. Wow, what a beautiful bathroom(s) since you have four. When I get my house (eventually) I want the master bedroom far, far away from the other bedrooms, and baths. Draw your own conclusions, lol.
    How dare Ken not like Damask roses!

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  10. Next, I suppose, we’ll be touring your closets. Attic? Basement? Toolshed with rusted, wicked looking yard trimming implements wind-chiming from the rafters?

    At least the clocks are stopped. Tick, tick, tick while trying to page through twenty Instagram channels would drive me insane.

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    • I DO have some very nice closets…Just kidding. I might do something on all the buildings Ken’s built. He’s very handy–when we bought this place over 15 years ago, it needed work, and he’s done most of it himself, including renovating all four bathrooms. And yes, none of my clocks tick–I would toss them out the window if they did!

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  11. Merbear74 says:

    I went from two shitters to now only one. But since it’s just my daughter and me, we can bitch slap each other if the other takes too long.
    And this TP thing makes me so thankful that I’m almost always constipated.

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    • When Ken and I were first married, we had one tiny bathroom between the two of us, and we both had to get ready for work at the same time. When we found this place, and saw the four bathrooms, we high fived:-)

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  12. Growing up we had one bathroom with two doors and thd only room in our farmhouse with locks.
    If you were in a hurry you ran in and locked both doors quickly. Worked well while being chased by my older sister.

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  16. That is a gorgeous home you have, Suzanne — at least so far as I can tell from the bathrooms! I’ve always dreamed of having an old place like that — living there and fixing it up over time. The other day, my wife and I were just watching Anne with an E, which shoots in Southern Ontario, and we were commenting on how beautiful the landscape is and how much we — even she! — looks forward to the day we’re living in a normal, four-season climate again. Anyway, when you convert your place into a B&B, kindly book me now for the first available room. (Fair warning: I may never leave!)

    As for Ken not understanding how a clock collection can serve as a performance-art experiment… has he never seen the opening scene of Back to the Future?!

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    • Thanks! It’s a very cool place with the right balance of upgrades and original features. The moment I walked in, I knew I had to have it. Luckily, it was in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere so it was very affordable. Now that the city has gotten closer, I’m happy we bought it all those years ago. It seems pretty big for just Ken and me, but I love it too much to downsize😊. I’m hoping one day I can host all my virtual friends here!

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  17. Once travel opens up again, I think I should like to be a guest at your bed and breakfast. I mean not that I’m inviting myself, but once you convert, and by then, this virus will (geez, I hope!) be but a distant history lesson. Thanks for the smile, Suzanne!

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  19. I’m so glad you’ve updated us on your work bathroom situation, that’s very important and a lot of us were probably stressing about it. This is going to post as Sean but you can probably tell from the tone that it’s Jay teasing you. Our own home situation means that we’ve been using each other’s computers and about 5 different devices and it’s a tangled mess but luckily we didn’t have staunch favourites so we’re doing well.

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    • Ken’s working from home now too and his office is upstairs close to my bathroom so I’ve had to set up strict protocols around its use. I’m glad you’re doing well though and that my bathroom update helped bright your day (I hope).

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  21. I hate to say it, but the bathroom is an absolute afterthought in our world. I suppose it’s because our first house had only one cramped bathroom with a 24″ door that you just kind of wanted to get into and out of as quickly as possible. Our second house had a master bath that only I ever used (decorated in seaside wallpaper by the previous owner) and a front bathroom that only Mrs C ever used. We never changed out the 1979 blue hues.

    Our current home has two smallish bathrooms and, once again, I use the master one almost exclusively and she uses the front one. I don’t know why. But decorating it? Never comes up.

    I have no idea why I felt I had to carry on about my own bathrooms for three paragraphs in my response, but here we are. Talking about commodes. 🤷

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  23. Einstein constantly asks me, “Where is this or that?”, and 99% of the time I can tell him exactly where said item is. I would like to say that it’s because I have a great memory, or that I am just that organized, but in truth I think it’s more a matter of OCD. It also helps that I have taken many pictures over the years 😉

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  29. wendynouse says:

    I love your story ! Your house is an artpiece on it’s own! Perhaps the clocks stand for the time that has passed and still will arrive! Anyway, your house is absolutely beautiful!

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