The Pirate Bathroom

"I'm going to decorate my downstairs bathroom in a Pirates of the Caribbean theme," I said.

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Then my daughter said, with hesitation, "You're kidding... right?"

My oldest daughter is stylish, chic, elegant, appearance conscious - all adjectives that do not apply to me. Her home is tasteful and coordinated, with mostly new furnishings. My downstairs bathroom has been out of commission for years, and the idea of having it redone delighted her, but the idea that her mother, a grown woman, would deliberately choose a theme park ride as decorating inspiration did not sit well with her.

"No, I'm not! I'm serious! It'll be great! I'm already shopping at thrift stores for decorations!"

"Oh, Mom."

This bathroom is now my favorite room in the house. It makes me very happy.

(It is also a point of pride with me that Pirates was one of my favorite rides going back to the early 1980s. While it's fun that pop culture is embracing them, some of us loved the whole idea before it was cool.)

Our house was built in the early 1970s. It originally had 2 bathrooms, one downstairs and one upstairs. The original owners added onto the house, so we now have, among other things, a 3rd full bathroom off of the master bedroom.

A few years after we moved in, the downstairs toilet started to leak, so we stopped using it. Then the sink leaked; we stopped using it. Finally, the tub started to leak. We just closed the door and ignored the room for years. Hey, we had two more full bathrooms. We had limited money and a house full of children. Don't judge.

Eventually, we started tearing things out. We did it bit by bit until we hit a real stumbling block - the tub. It was a cast iron tub/shower enclosure. It had been set into place before the walls were built, and it was too large to fit through the doorway. We were stumped - how did we replace a tub that we couldn't remove? We closed the door again, and pretended that the room didn't exist for several more years.

Then, my feet needed operated on. OK, they'd needed it for a long time, but we finally had youngest children who were teens capable of taking care of themselves and me. When my doctor first suggested it, my oldest kids were in elementary school, and I had a one year old; bed rest was not going to happen. The younger kids were now also homeschooled, so we'd rarely need to leave the house while I spent the projected 4 to 6 weeks off of my feet.

But, that meant a working bathroom on my ground floor, since going up and down my stairs would be next to impossible while I recovered. We had to get the bathroom up and running before I could schedule surgery.

We finished demolition, including sawing the old tub and shower in half. Yeah, that was interesting. We tore out the water damaged drywall. Finally, we tore up the rotted, splitting floor. The room looked like this:

My husband intended to do most of the work himself, but between his 12 hour shifts and life in general, this was not a good plan. A friend helped us get to the point that we then hired a pro to install everything and finish the room. Instead of a tub, we went with a handicapped accessible shower.

God bless talented contractors!

I was in such a hurry to paint it. Of course, "hurry" is a relative term. My almost 15 year old had never used the bathroom. Then my husband installed the flooring.

Normally, I like white walls and white blinds, maybe with white curtains over them. I know, very institutional and bland. I like it anyway. It's restful. If I add colors, I want to add blue, any shade but navy, and other pale colors. My daughter's room is a pale pink and my son's is a pale gray. Both are so light that they're almost white. The upstairs bathroom is white with blue and green sponge paint, and an ocean theme, with my collection of beach sand in decorative jars (yes, I collect beach sand), shells, and a shower curtain with dolphins and palm trees.

Downstairs in the new bathroom, I went with a totally uncharacteristic color palate. I wanted amber, ruby and deep brown. I wanted it to look like it could belong below deck on a pirate ship, or in Disneyland. I wanted the feel of a storage room heaped with treasure.

I'm a competent stage technician in many jobs, but my area of expertise is set dressing and prop making. The last show that I got to "dress" was A Christmas Carol, and I loved it. When my kids have had proms to attend, I dress the photo backdrop in our bedroom studio to match the theme. I've done "Arabian Nights," "A Night to Treasure," "A Night at the Museum," "A Night in Paris" and more with things I have on hand anyway. I'd also been collecting things specifically for this bathroom for a long time. That ring of iron keys is one of my favorite purchases.

There's a lot of memories in here. The beads are from trips to Disneyland, Disney cruises, and my niece's 20s themed wedding. The ornate silver piece holding the coins and gems belonged to my mother. So did the silver goblet. The amethyst is from my rock and mineral collection; so are the onyx goblets and the marble globes. The egg shaped boxes were gifts from my oldest daughter. The jade elephant is a childhood gift from my brother. The shiny rock behind it is my sample of silicon that I used while teaching K-3 geology. The Egyptian figures were things I bought just because I liked them, and they ended up being used in my son's archaeological dig project for our homeschool co-op. I bought the carved parrot in Nassau.

I don't have a medicine cabinet, so I use the cute box.

I'm not a stickler for historical accuracy unless I have to be, so this room isn't a period piece. If it was, I wouldn't use my son's Lego set, or the photographs we took in the Disney ride. (Those are printed on metal, to keep the humidity of a bathroom from being an issue.) The print of a pirate ship was a gift from my middle daughter, as was the plaque with words on it. She used the metal trays when she catered a dessert buffet at a wedding.

I originally wanted an oval mirror with an ornate, gilt frame, but the mirror came in a set with the vanity and sink. I'm OK with it.

I love this bathroom. I love that it allowed me to get the operation that I needed, but I also love just looking at it.

A pirate's life for me.

Travel Reviews

I am not a hotel snob. I can't bring myself to be any kind of snob, really.

I love to travel, but all I really want out of a hotel is that it be clean, comfortable, quiet and safe. I don't really plan to spend much time at the hotel. My kids have frequently complained that they don't get to spend enough time in hotel pools.

Sometimes, we'll book a stay at a resort, intending to do more than just sleep and shower there. Our favorite was on the Big Island of Hawaii.

I rarely read guest reviews of properties, because I've discovered that most people hold opinions that are very different from mine. We loved this property. It's one of the few places we've ever stayed where we didn't leave the hotel for an entire day. Our favorite spot was the lagoon, where we snorkeled almost daily. After we came home, I read some reviews, and was glad that I hadn't read them, and perhaps passed on this resort, based on them, before we left.

Many were just scathing. "Awful. I'd never stay here again. Avoid at all costs." Really?

The most common complaint was, "It took 20 minutes to go between the parking lot and our room." Clearly, repeatedly, in the description available, it says that the resort is 62 acres, with several swimming pools, a golf course, the lagoon, restaurants and more. Did anyone imagine that 62 acres meant that you'd be within 5 minutes of your room at all times? Even walking was quick, maybe 25 minutes from property end to end, and there were both a train and gleaming teak and brass boats that would take guests between buildings. Yet, over and over came the complaint about how far apart things were.

One guest complained that the whole place "smelled like a sewer." Um, no, sir, it smelled like the tropics. It smelled wet, because it is wet. The ocean does not smell like a chlorinated pool. Wet, loamy soil does not smell like my home in the desert. Fish ponds will smell like fish live there. There's a country song about a student trip with the lyrics, "We all started yelling when we smelled the beach." I was glad that it was written by someone actually familiar with the ocean. Anyone who expects the real thing to smell like fabric softener called "Ocean Breeze" will be disappointed. The real thing smells wet, a bit fishy, and faintly of decaying plant matter.

We want to go back some day, and take the rest of our family.

At Disneyland, a favorite destination, we like to be within walking distance of the parks. We have stayed on Disney property, at the Grand Californian, and it was great. The room was comfortable, convenient, and had bunk beds for my kids. Why don't more hotels have bunk beds? How often do you want to put two couples in a room together? (Don't answer that.) My travel has usually been with between 2 and 5 kids. Kids do not want to share a bed. Parents do not want to listen to arguments about hogging space and taking the covers. Yet, Disney is one of a very few companies I've ever known to put bunk beds (including ones with a trundle!) in their rooms.

Still, the Grand Californian is much more expensive than other choices. We usually choose places that are in an entirely different cost bracket.

We once stayed at a property that my husband and I loved, and our oldest daughter hated. It was an older place, probably built in the 1950s, and it looked like it. The pool was tiny, and the breakfast was prepackaged pastries. We didn't care; the room was great. We had a mini suite with a king sized bed in one room (important when you and your spouse are both large people, and your spouse can't stand to be touched in his sleep), a second bedroom with 2 queen sized beds, and a full kitchen, with a full sized refrigerator, a stove, a microwave and a dining room table. It would have been especially ideal if we'd been planning an extended stay. We had 5 of us in our room, and my oldest daughter and her husband in another room.

What did this daughter hate the most? The towels. "They're rags! The cleaning rags at my house are nicer than these!" This is true, about her cleaning rags. She is a towel snob. At the age of 13, she was furious with me because I would not replace the one year old beach towel that she'd used exactly twice. ("It's old! It's worn out!") The hotel towels were showing signs of age, sure, but I wouldn't even have remembered them if she hadn't come unglued. (I think she's too picky. She thinks I'm not picky enough. Yes, we love each other and choose to travel together, at least once a year.) She insists that if we ever stay there again, she will bring her own towels. OK.

(The next time she stayed at a hotel, she phoned me. "It was great! Everything was brand new, and the towels were so fluffy!")

Recently we went to Paris, my husband, my youngest 2 children and me. Three of the four of us had never been there before; my son was there two years ago. Paris, of course, is one of those iconic cities that almost everyone wants to see.

As usual, I just wanted clean and comfortable. Unlike my usual routine, I read the reviews on the booking site ahead of time. I knew nothing about Paris, and I wanted to be sure of things like how close it was to the train station; we planned on arriving and leaving by train.

"I think this hotel caters to college backpackers," I told my husband. It was in an older building with few amenities, inexpensive, and the room I booked had 4 single beds. (Unlike the frame of reference in the US, here "older" equated to "about two centuries," nearly as I could tell.) The reviews said that the rooms were small. "If you have a lot of luggage, plan on stacking it in the tub." We were fine with all of this, because we'd be in Paris. It was supposed to be within walking distance of the Louvre - bonus!

When we arrived, tired and dragging our huge American suitcases, they may have looked at our family and decided to put us in a different room, because they gave us a room with 2 queen beds. There were no lifts; we went up three flights of these stairs. (At least we didn't have to traverse the 6 flights to the top.)

Here's the room itself:

It was small, but not as small as I'd expected. The bathroom was larger than I expected, too. The walls were thick stone, so it was comfortable even without air conditioning. With the windows closed, it was also quiet. The only noise that seeped through were TV sounds from the flatscreen on the opposite side of one wall. The beds were some of the most comfortable we slept on during the entire week in Europe. The bedding was thick cotton, hand quilted, and reminded me of something you'd find on a visit to a grandparent's house. And we were in Paris!

It was half a block from the metro station, a few minutes' walk to the train station, close to numerous restaurants. Here's a few of the places we walked to that first day:

Paris!

After we came home, we left our own review. It said basically what I said above - comfortable, clean, great location, few amenities. Then I read the other reviews.

About half said almost the same things I did. The others were deeply scathing. "Never stay here!" "I'm writing on every travel sight (sic) I can find to avoid this place!" "Awful!" Honestly, I think most of those were the traveler's fault. One whined, "I didn't even realize I'd booked a one star property until I arrived." Really, Traveler? It's clearly posted on the website. Even if it wasn't, you thought that a place without a pool, a fitness center, conference rooms or any other modern amenities was a five star?

One woman said, "Overweight people would have a hard time in these rooms." I'm very large, my husband and daughter aren't small, and we were fine. We didn't have to stack our luggage in the tub, either. Another said, "I literally could not turn around." People really need to understand what "literally" means. It is not physically possible to be in a room large enough to hold a bed and be "literally" unable to turn around. Nobody would be ballroom dancing in these rooms, our two beds were each against a wall, but let's not exaggerate here.

One said, "I don't even think the photos on the website were real." Wow. After looking through them, I can say that not only do I not think that they're faked, they're very accurate. I saw the single room across the hall from us, our room, the lobby, the lounge - they all look just like the web photos. The main photo on the site looks almost identical to this one that I took.

I think I'll continue to stick with my usual behavior - I don't ask for, or give, advice very often, because what I think and what others think may or may not bear any resemblance to each other.

Did I mention that I got to see Paris?

The second morning, we walked down the street to a little bakery for breakfast. While we were deciding, someone walked in and said, "Bonjour. Un baguette, sil vous plait." It was delightful - we were having An Authentic French Experience! I'd be happy to do it again.

I'd be happy to do it from a comfortable, clean one star hotel.

Darth Maul Goes to Disneyland

Last October, my family got to do something we've always wanted to do - we went to the Halloween party at Disneyland.

My daughters and I had to iron our costumes before we looked presentable, my husband had to inflate a bag to go inside his tall Mad Hatter hat, and my son in law had to buy a hat to replace the one he left at home hundreds of miles away. No one's costume needed more prep, though, than my son's.

The clothes were simple - black shoes, pants and long sleeved shirt, and the hooded black polyester cape he usually uses to be the Grim Reaper. He also had to shave his head.

Technically, his sister shaved his head. Before bed, the night before the party, we said goodbye to his hair.

He spent most of the next day in a hat, so as not to burn his lily white head.

At dinner, the real transformation started. The party started in the evening, so we got dinner at the Plaza Inn - one of our favorites - and broke out the paintbrushes, horns and spirit gum.

My middle daughter, Terry is a cake decorator and very artistic. Before we left home, she made horns out of air dry clay, numbered them, and fit them to Alex's scalp. She painted them with food coloring, and packed them.

Looking at a photo on her phone for reference, she started painting. After the main lines were drawn, she glued the horns on with spirit gum.

I helped fill in the large areas with color after Terry outlined them.

Two boys at an adjoining table inched closer and closer, finally abandoning their table.

The final result was amazing.

Here he is with his creator.

At the Star Wars photo op, the Storm Troopers reached out and wiggled the horns. On discovering that they were, indeed, stuck, they offered a fist bump.

As we walked past the living scarecrow, he said, "Oh, yeah. Darth Maul just ties you all together."

Oh, and he was chosen as the rebel spy on Star Tours.

I wonder what we'll do next Halloween to top that.