Potty Talk

Big, B-I-G, big day atop Flat Top today. Now, when you flush our toilet with that little magical chrome handle, not only does it flush, but water then fills into the tank, like magic! It's a miracle! After two months of using buckets of water from outside to flush the toilet, this is a major breakthrough in bringing modern conveniences to our mountain retreat.

But wait, there's more!!!

After two months of brushing our teeth at the kitchen sink, we now have a new sink, faucet and, yes, running HOT and cold water in the bathroom. INCREDIBLE. (It's the little things in life, people.) As I type, Mason is celebrating with a shave. "I gotta say, baby, this is just like (pause) shaving," he just yelled at me. "Not a hardship at all."

But wait, wait, don't settle for just that! There's MORE!! Check this out:

That's water coming out of our new makeshift shower plumbing. So tonight, we take our first showers standing up. (The sun shower we've been using required a squatting position ... don't try to picture it; it isn't pretty.)

The whole room, such as it is,  is still on schedule for an entire remodel as soon as the weather is certain to be warm enough for outdoor showering (ooh la la) during the reconstruction phase. The wood planking is going bye-bye, slate tile is on the way, the ceiling will get lifted, and we're still weighing whether to stick with the claw foot tub or just go with a tiled shower (votes anyone?).

Now, all of this progress is thanks to Mason spending a couple of hours under the house yesterday, wedged in a one-foot-tall space between the floor joists and leaf-strewn dirt. A neighbor came by while he was under there and asked me: "He knows there could be copperheads (poisonous snakes) under there, right? They start to wake up about this time of year." Riiiiight. Gulp.

Welcome to the mountain.

And yes, life is STILL good. So good, that we're talking about brewing up our first batch of homebrew beer real soon.