baby girl; bathroom fantasies

[flea]

The nanny got Casper a baby doll for Xmas - Fisher Price "Little Mommy" - plus those little bottles that when you tilt them the milk seems to disappear. I guess she thinks we aren't reinforcing her gender thoroughly enough (or, frankly, at all). She also got her a pink teddy bear. She got Ellen pink stuffed animals, and the boys got motorcycles. Heh. (I want to get Casper some Matchbox cars, but mr flea thinks they are too small & prone to shedding swallowable pieces still, and we haven't seen any good cars suitable for a small person except those spongy ones I don't like.)

Casper's very cute with the "baby", though. She carries it and feeds it a bottle. She can say baby, bottle, and mama, but she only says mama in relationship to herself (I am not mama yet, though the idea seems to be dawning on her). I suggested that the baby might want to nurse, and held her to my breast, which was greeted with a "What you talkin' 'bout, Willis?" facial expression. Clearly, babies take bottles. Only Caspers nurse.

In my deep and abiding boredom at my nearly abandoned workplace this week, I have been fantasizing about renovating my bathroom. Note: we do not actually OWN our HOUSE. It's all Plei's fault for recommending rejuvenation.com, which got me thinking about the true evil of our bathroom's circa 1978 light fixture, and then to the whole room. So, if it were to be done:

Cheap version: remove sink and icky cabinet - install pedestal sink (try to match toilet finish - I think toilet is original). Regrout (not grout, properly - that silicone stuff) tub rim and base. Paint walls above tile (I am quite fond of my mother's robin's egg blue bathroom). Remove mirror and hang a medicine cabinet and/or shelves above the toliet. New light fixture, natch.

Full-on version: all of the above, plus new vent system/overhead light. Do something about the towel racks (they are inherent to the inoffensive plain white tiling, but have ugly plastic rods. I can't see how to fix them without re-tiling, which is why this is in the full-on section). Remove green linoleum and tile the floor (ideally with those tiny b/w tiles that we've had in pre-war bathrooms before). Replace the window up high in the bath, which while useful is hideous and out of period. New hardware on the tub. Plaster work on the ceiling, too.

Not ours to do, though. Sigh. (mr flea, on hearing this fantasia, "You really want a house, don't you?")

Comments

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

I have similar fantasies about my current apartment. Replacing the kitchen cabinets, re-wallpapering the bathroom, removing the utterly useless built-in shelves taking up 2/3s of my only closet -- it could get quite liveable. But it's not mine, so I'm thinking no.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

So, are you saving up for a down payment? If you're settled in this town, there's lots of reasonably priced real estate (if you're comfortable with urban neighborhoods)...

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

I'm currently getting rid of some debt. Around the end oif 2005 (barring various fiscal disasters such as layoffs and the like) I hope to start getting a downpayment together. It's going to take that long to decide if I'm settling here. I like our area a lot, but there are job issues, alas. I'm waiting to see if a possible position opens up by the end of the year. If it does -- yay! I like the work and I like the people I work with. If it doesn't, I'll have to start looking for community college work, which, given various market issues, means looking out of our state.

Are you and mr flea planning on moving?

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Well, come the PhD (estimated spring 2006 or later), we have to see what he wants to do, where he can get a job he'd actually like. I hate the weather here, and would rather be closer to family (which means New England or Ohio). But I like the architecture and housing market here. We'll see. But we aren't thinking of buying before the decision is made.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I wish I could fantasize about renovating my apartment. The first step would be, evict my flatmate. I like her a lot, but the place is just too small to contemplate as a permanent home unless I lived alone.

(But if I did fantasize, it would be about ripping out the wood paneling in the kitchen. Landlord asked me, "What, you don't like it??" He does not seem to think that a kitchen being dark like a CAVE is a problem.)

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Evil fake wood paneling can be painted white, you know. Cheaply and without too much hassle.

[cindywrites.livejournal.com]

Is this the stuff of the 70s, or real knotty pine? I would never paint the real wood stuff, but if it's the sort of paneling that lived back in the era of the shag carpet, you can ask his permission to paint it. You have to scruff it up a bit with sandpaper, and I think prime it (I can actually find this out, if you want to know) first.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Let me reiterate: What, you don't like it??

Landlord won't let me paint it, because he likes it.

Also, this is the guy who takes 4 days to shovel out our snowy driveway, which is 3 days more goofing off than the law allows. So, I'm picking my battles with this dude.

[cindywrites.livejournal.com]

Okay. I didn't get he was at the level of "I like it" that meant he wouldn't let you paint it. I figured he was more likely at the level of, "We're not ripping it out, because that will involve patching the walls, and possibly new woodwork and see it isn't that bad" sort of liking it.

I totally understand the battle picking, too.

gender roles

[askye.livejournal.com]

My friend's 3 yr old daughter is all into purple-pink-shiny-princessy girly things as well as trucks (especially fire trucks) Spider man, and tools.

I think Fisher Price or Little tykes (I think that's the brand) make chunky non spongy cars and trucks.

[forodwaith.livejournal.com]

> Clearly, babies take bottles. Only Caspers nurse.

Hah!

It's amazing how much just new paint can do for a bathroom. We repainted ours two years ago (couldn't and still can't afford the full-on reno) and it made a huge difference.

We are Bad Parents because the Blue-Eyed Boy's been chewing on Hot Wheels almost since birth, and Nora's followed suit. I don't worry about those, because even if the wheels come off they are tiny enough to be, um, digested. IMO the cars you need to watch out for are the slightly larger kind; not only are they shoddily made (the BEB's never had one that stood up to more than a week of play), the wheels are grape-sized - definitely big enough to choke on.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

Can I just say that I hate pedestal sinks. They look nice, but are absolutely useless if you actually live with them (he says, having done so for almost 15 years). There's no place to put anything, so you have to have a table or shelves convenient to them, which kind of negates the simplicity.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Given the (small) size of our bathroom I think a pedestal would make sense for us (assming the plumbing would work - our pipes are a bit weird). We don't have much space around the edges of our current sink to store stuff on - we mostly keep stuff on the back of the toilet as it is. Our current sink is no bigger than this, for example: http://www.vintagetub.com/asp/product_detail.asp?item_no=c511lwh
And all the crap in the cabinet under the sink could be stored elsewhere as it is low-use (well, except the spare toilet paper. hmm.).

Also, with a pedestal sink, we wouldn't have had the delightful experience of smelling decayed mouse on Monday, and removing said mouse from the mousetrap. I could have done without that!

[orthoepy.livejournal.com]

LB had some nice biggish plastic cars that we got at the upscale toy store, although they were only $5. There as a fire truck and a coupe and a front-loader.

Could you hacksaw out the bars and put in the spring-loaded kind?

[cashmerepett.livejournal.com]

One Step Ahead has a great vehicle set for young toddlers here.

We started renovations but ran out of money to finish. Therefore, we have NO trim downstairs. This drove me crazy for the first two months but now I'm patiently waiting until Spring when we can finish the job.

But we do have nice wood floors now. It's what's keeping me sane.

[theodosia.livejournal.com]

Is it possible you could talk the landlord into giving you a rent abeyance in exchange for painting/renovating the bathroom?

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Well, she's a very attentive landlord. But her general approach to projects is to hire professionals or do it herself - I think she may have been burned by tenants doing "improvements" themselves in the past. So, for example, we are expressly asked not to even do such simple things as paint walls. We have a drain that gets sluggish, and she has some magic crystals that fix it, but instead of leaving the bottle of crystals with us, she would rather we called her every two months to have the drain fixed. She's a - how do you say it - COMPLETE control freak. So, no.