Crapper

I haven't posted in forever, because I am trapped in reno hell. A small en suite bathroom gut and rebuild has been going for a month and is still not done. In the second week -- after approximately 20-ish work hours had been done (ie four short work days) -- I did some research and wrote some notes for this post.  But now I can't find my notes and they were good, smart, funny.

The notes were about Thomas Crapper -- you know that guy that everyone says invented the flush toilet. Everyone except the people who say he didn't. The ones that say some guy who worked for or was related to Queen Victoria invented it. I'm thinking that those people are monarchists. Brits and monarch-loving, royal-baby-bump-watching kooks. Because what Queen V had was essentially a pit privy in her palace. A lovely pit privy fit for a royal highnie that leaked noxious sewer gases and other substances, since there really wasn't any sewer system to speak of. Yeah let's give that guy the credit. He was a knight or a peer or something...

And then there were other cool facts like how Wedgwood and Royal Dalton made the early toilet bowls and decorated them angels and such. Only rich people had toilets. Poor people had chamber pots... and that reminds me of something: he's so poor, he don't have a pot to piss in...and now it makes sense. Oh yes, and if you did have a pot to piss in, you emptied it by chucking the waste out the window. Nice...fancy a stroll luv?

But along came Mr Crapper and he figured out how to stop the ceramic toilet bowls from leaking the flushables, invented a proper flush mechanism, and just about everything else that makes a toilet a toilet in the modern, no seepage or sewer gas, vein. So I say give credit where credit is due and let's not allow wikipedia or anyone else call the Thomas Crapper story an urban myth (that's right, some people are trying to sell that load of....

....it's too easy. Too cheesy. I just can't make that joke. It's beneath me.

Happy May Two-Four!

Happy May Two-Four Weekend! That’s right. May 2-4. Because, did you notice the date? It’s May 23^rd…and it’s Thursday, so tomorrow, Friday, is the 24^th and the beginning of the weekend. Are you with me? Fer sure!

Who really celebrates the queen’s birthday anyway? Did you know that’s what the May long weekend is about: a fixed date to celebrate / genuflect to the monarch’s birth. In a democracy…doesn’t make sense. So this weekend is my weekend of celebration.

Because, (1) I don’t believe in monarchies. No divine right to rule (they claim that you know). No primogeniture (first born son gets the crown , even if there's a perfectly suitable 1st born girl, which is kinda sexist if you ask me). And no more public dollars wasted on allegedly (no lawsuits here) inbred royals waving at the besotted citizenry.

And, (2) I grew up in northern Ontario where no one called it the Victoria Day Weekend (except my ex-pat brit parents). Everyone called it the May two-four weekend. As in you go to the Brewer’s Retail (remember that?  Your dad told them what he wanted and they just shot the case out on a rolling belt) and buy a two-four of beer, to be consumed over the weekend. On a dock or in a backyard next to a bbq.

I was in high-school when I finally figured out (ie my mom reamed me out for being a dunce) that Victoria Day = the May Long Weekend = May Two-Four. Say ‘two-four’ in kind of a hoser voice and it’ll make more sense; work in an ‘eh’ and a ‘giv’er’ and you’re good to go.

As in: "Oh ya eh, it’s may two-four this weekend. Gotta go the beer store and get me a case of blue. Gonna go out to camp* and just giv’er."

"Oh fer sure eh…"

* up north no one (except for prissy, poncey, pretending they’re Torontonian snots) calls it ‘the cottage’. And you don’t go up, you go out.  To camp.  And if you’re a very overweight or emaciated man you don’t wear a shirt the whole time.

So this weekend I will go to the LCBO, buy a micro-brewery six-pack and drink a bottle in my prissy Toronto backyard garden, while my husband, with his shirt on, fires up the bbq…and just giv’er! 

Because I am Canadian.