Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.

One word: TOTO®.  

It is THE brand of toilets preferred by industry insiders and general poop experts world-wide. 

I learned this two years ago when we upgraded our powder room toilet. I was wandering the aisles of a local home improvement mega-store, having trouble choosing between the highly publicized American Standard and Kohler brands, when I decided to use my “phone-a-friend lifeline.” Luckily for me, I happen to be very tight with two fabulous people who do PR for one of the industry leaders in plumbing fixtures and they have educated me over the years on some of the ins and outs of the toilet biz. So I speed-dialed “John” from the toilet aisle, knowing he had worked for one of those major brands, and asked which of the two major toilets to buy. And you know what he said? “NEITHER. Get a TOTO.” It was a life changing phone call. Big lesson there ya’ll… surround yourself with good people and ask for help when you need it! It just doesn’t get any easier than that.   

“Technologically advanced and aesthetically pleasing, our industry-leading toilets offer legendary flushing performance.” TOTO®, you had me at “legendary.” That is not a word one typically associates with toileting. I find it absolutely irresistible. And when I learned that TOTO’s 2 – 1/8 inch extra large trapway can pass a 2″ test ball (which is 33% larger than the industry standard) without clogging, I knew it was just the toilet for our passel of professional poopers.  

So that was two years ago. We bought the TOTO® Clayton™ 1.6 GPF with G-MAX commercial grade flushing performance and have never looked back. That single purchase may be the only thing in my life that has never caused me even a hint of buyer’s remorse. I love that thing. LOVE. So naturally, the other day when our four house guests clogged the two non-TOTO toilets on our second floor, a few days before Thanksgiving, I knew there was only one thing to do.  

The Gatekeeper and I loaded up the mini-van and headed back to European Sink Atlanta. As a satisfied repeat customer, I walked in that place like I owned it and announced without shame to the lovely saleslady who greeted us: “We’ve got a house full of company and a clogged toilet situation. We need a TOTO.” 

She was ready and willing to help us find the exact model for our needs. But who knew there were so many features to consider?! When I bought my last TOTO®, I really didn’t do any research beyond asking my friend John about the brand. I chose the TOTO® Clayton™ because of the way it coordinated with my other powder room design choices. It was pricey, but so worth it. It’s gorgeous and performs like a dream. 

But this time, I felt like I was ready for the advanced class on Toilet Talk.  

Other than the fact that I knew it had to be a TOTO®, our new toilet needed to meet three criteria. This one was going into the kids’ bathroom upstairs, so it needed to be very utilitarian and easy to clean; style was not as much of an issue. I also knew that I never wanted to hear another house guest rummaging for a toilet plunger – so flushing performance was critical. And thirdly, I wanted to keep the cost down. 

These three requirements were enough to point us in the right direction of the showroom. But Lordhavemercy! The choices! Did we want the SanaGloss™ protective porcelain glaze to make cleaning even easier? (YES! Der.) And what about flushing technology? Would the G-MAX be enough for our incredibly constipated extended family or should we go whole hog and get the TOTO® Patented Double Cyclone Flushing System? And of course I could accept nothing less than a SoftClose® toilet seat! That’s right people… there is such a thing. A toilet seat that closes slowly and silently on its own. Say goodbye to noisy slamming toilets. Tell me more, TOTO®. Tell me more.  

Did we want a one-piece unit with no pesky seam to trap all the poorly aimed boy pee?  Gosh, those are more expensive and heavier, but easier to clean. Oooh, how about a skirted model? I do have two little boys who apparently subscribe to the Dick Cheney method of “ready, aim, fire, miss.” Hmmm. Tough choice. And what about the water efficiency? I totally want to “be green,” but not at the expense of a poor flush. I am sorry Mother Earth, but I will sacrifice a little extra water for the sake of no skid marks. Shoot, it’s not like my kids ever remember to flush anyway. But with TOTO’s brilliant engineering and a possible rebate in my county for water-wise upgrades, it may be worth it to choose the “eco” model! 

Then there was the whole comfort factor. We are tall people. Should we get the ADA compliant model that is a little higher off the ground? Or, since this new toilet was going to be in the kids’ bathroom, should we get the standard height? Elongated bowl or round?  

And speaking of options, TOTO® offers a full line of Washlet seats with features such as remote controls, aerated warm water cleansing, deodorizing system, heated seats, and much more. Oh boy, this was going to be tougher than I thought. 

Thank GOD I had The Gatekeeper with me. He is SO practical, don’t you know. He was able to filter through all the information and decide without reservation within a matter of minutes on the biggest bang for the smallest buck. He chose The Eco-Drake® Toilet, 1.28 GPF. I am convinced that he partially chose this model so he could annoyingly repeat the Seinfeld quote “Love the Drake!” for the rest of his natural life. But as usual, he was right. This toilet is perfect for the kids’ bathroom. It is simple and attractive, water efficient, powerful, and economical. With tax and the SoftClose seat upgrade it was $301 out the door. 

I personally was much more interested in the TOTO® Gywneth™! And yes, partly because it shares the same name as one of my favorite celebs. The TOTO® Gywneth™ was totally out of our league though. Retailing at $680, it features a one-piece design, has the SanaGloss finish, is ADA compliant, and sports the Double Cyclone flush technology. That means it uses two powerful nozzles to create a forceful centrifugal action that cleans the rim and bowl thoroughly with every flush. Self cleaning, ya’ll! Can you believe it? AND the rim has no holes, which makes it even easier to keep clean and offers a seamless appearance. Pardon me while I wipe my drool. I find it captivating that a toilet marketed for being so clean has the same name as an actress so well known for her immaculately groomed undercarriage. Coincidence? I think not.

The Gatekeeper promised me we could get the TOTO® Gwyneth™ for the Master Bathroom someday… he said it was way too nice for the kids’ bath. I guess he’s right, as usual. Dammit.  

But back to The Drake. Love the Drake. The installation was pretty easy, according to my brother-in-law, Mr. Awesome, and his two crack-a-lacky helpers, my husband and his little brother (pictured below). He’s single, ladies, and he lives in Chicago. Email me for details. First come, first served. 

Just say "no" to crack.

 

Mmmm, look at all that baked-in goodness!

I just want to say, those designers and engineers at TOTO® thought of everything! Look at the picture below of my old toilet. You can see how the toilet seat was attached with metal screws, which had rusted over time and left a big old nasty mess every time the seat was closed. Disgusting.

Plus, look at all the Thomas-English-Muffinesque-nooks-and-crannies on the old seat which collected all the poorly aimed boy pee and proved nearly impossible to clean:

Ewwww! I’ll have you know that this toilet was cleaned by a paid professional less than a week before this picture was taken. Even Mr. Clean himself wouldn’t be able to get that dried-on tinkle out of those cracks and crevices. This is just poor design. Beamis, shame on you. 

But look at how the geniuses at TOTO® address this issue:

Shoot, look at that, I already see a few little sprinkles of dried boy pee on back of the seat. Not cool. But what I really want you to see is the fact that there are no metal parts here to rust and corrode. And the connection between the seat and the toilet is one long seam… so easy to clean. Now look at the other side:

See? More great design. Again, one long seam with plastic covers over the plastic screws. Those covers pop open for easy cleaning. Brilliant! 

The only thing missing here is a “bullseye” painted in the bowl, as suggested by a fellow blogger who knows a thing or two about boys and pee-pee.  TOTO® Gods, you may want to consider adding that as an interim solution while you are developing a self-cleaning lid (and base, and surrounding walls, and ceiling, Lordhavemercy). 

Oh look, here’s a picture of the venison sausage my brother-in-law brought with him and cooked on my stove one morning during his ten day visit. Yeah. With a diet like that, you can see why we need the extra flushing power. I bet I could flush all four of those greasy sausages AND the frying pan in my new TOTO® and still not have to use a toilet plunger. Now THAT’S a good toilet. 

Good Lord Almighty. How I survived those ten days is a mystery. I’m certain retiring my plunger had something to do with it though. Thank you TOTO®! 

So anyhooo, I just had to share the good news. It is hard not to gush about a marvel of engineering and design such as my new TOTO® Eco-Drake. I am seriously in love. LOVE, I tells ya. Get one. At least one. And tell ‘em Iris sentcha, honey. Clean is Happy! Truer words have never been spoken. 

© 2008 The Bearded Iris

Cornhole

Well since nobody has come forward with that one-way ticket to ANYWHERE, I had no choice but to go to Cub Scout Family Camp with my brood yesterday.  I love that my 9 year old son is a Cub Scout…I do.  He has a blast and it is always very wholesome, good clean fun, which I suspect is good for growing children and is in somewhat short supply around my germ-invested cesspool of a home.  Soap carving, anyone? 

But I have two problems with the whole Cub Scout camp-out thing.  

1.) They have a very strict rule that no alcoholic beverages are allowed at camp. 

2.) The other moms and dads are very nice.  I mean VERY nice.  Like the nicest people I have ever met.  

In other words…I do not fit in there at all.  And being in the balmy, great outdoors around very nice, responsible, not-funny parents and 30 loud, screaming, little boys running amok and carrying pocket knives really makes me want to soothe myself with a cocktail or two. I’m bad. I know.

But I muscled through the pain and managed to really enjoy myself, even though I was disturbingly sober. And there were a few high-points that I’d like to share with you, because if I don’t, I’m going to explode.  

First, let’s talk about Cornhole.  Oh, where do I start?

OK. The facts: Cornhole is a real bean-bag toss game that originated in Ohio. The board looks like this:

Seriously. I’m not making this up. 

Apparently, people who play this game are very passionate about it. The dimensions of the board are strictly regulated, as are the bean-bags, the distance between the player and the board, the scoring, etc. However, I had never heard of this “game” until Cub Scout Family Camp when one of the very very nice dads brought his Cornhole supplies to share with the group. So naturally, when I walked by and he asked me “if I wanted to play Cornhole” with him and his sons…I almost crapped my pants.

“Excuse me?” I stuttered. (Wow, maybe this camping thing won’t be so bad afterall!)

So he clarified. Pointed to the board. Tossed me a bag of dried corn. And we played. And you know what? It was really, really fun! But I was DYING, ya’ll.  Because I couldn’t control myself and made a snide crack about how I had never heard the term “Cornhole” outside of the prison movies that I so enjoy watching and HE TOTALLY DIDN’T GET IT.  He cocked his head to the side and made that face like “Huh?” And I realized that not everyone shares my wickedly dirty mind and that I should probably not attempt to joke around with Cub Scout Dads. They are very nice. And very straight. And to some of them, Cornhole is no laughing matter. 

But thank God for my husband. As soon as I finished my Cornholing session with Mr. Ohio, I ran as fast as my stumps could carry me to tell my man about the game and we giggled until our faces hurt.  We don’t do that very often…my husband is actually one of those Nice Cub Scout Dads…but luckily for me, I must have rubbed off on him a bit (wink wink) because he does appreciate a good butt-hole joke from time to time. Not often enough, I say, but we’re working on it. I’ll keep rubbing.  

So one more really funny thing to share, if you don’t mind.

The Scoutmaster organized an “Iron Chef” competition between the boys. The kids were divided up into three teams, given access to a pantry of processed foods, and taught various outdoor camp cooking methods. One of which is the Dutch Oven. Honestly, I should force my son to stay in Scouts just for the material. Hmmm, more ass-related humor. I wonder what Freud would say about that. Clearly I am trapped in the Anal Stage of Development (and I’m not blaming my parents…I’m not). But anyhoooo, let’s just say that listening to these nice nice dads very seriously teach the group the art of the Dutch Oven was almost too much for me to bear. Oh how I longed to have someone pull one of my fingers! Pick a finger, any finger.  

After the cooking demonstration, the three teams were each assigned a secret ingredient to incorporate into their dishes. My team’s secret ingredient was popcorn.  Now, I was just lurking on the edge of the group, having to follow my 19-month old son, Bucket Head, around and make sure he didn’t wander off and get eaten by a bear, so I wasn’t really helping the kids choose the menu.  But watching these other nice nice moms and dads strategize and play to win was fascinating. The main requirement to the contest was that the kids had to do all the cooking….the parents could only supervise and control the cooking fuel.  But when I learned that they were stumped about how to use the popcorn in their dishes, I had to butt-in.  They were deciding to just do a simple trail mix of popcorn and nuts when I sidled up to one of the more assertive moms and asked her if we had access to marshmallows and butter. I then planted the seed in her head that if we made popcorn balls out of the popcorn, it would be a real crowd pleaser and something that the kids would have fun making.  And that nice mom hopped on my idea faster than an Ohioan on a stiff ear of corn.    

Now, I’m not used to being listened to by anyone other than my team of well-compensated, highly skilled psychiatrists, so suddenly being thrust into the mix of an Iron Chef competition with a team of chefs reporting to me was quite the power trip.  Suddenly, Bucket Head was fending for himself and I was melting butter and marshmallows in a Dutch Oven, fixin’ to lead my team to a sure victory. You know that phrase “too many cooks in the kitchen”? Well, imagine the chaos when you’re talking about an outdoor camp style kitchen with propane fueled burners and a very enthusiastic team of very competitive nice nice parents and their 6-9 year old boys. It was mayhem. But the popcorn balls were my idea and I was not going to let my team down, dammit! That is a dangerous position for a suddenly sober dirty minded not nice nice mom like me. The pressure!  

Well we oiled up the hands of these 7 little kids, and I gotta tell you, I don’t think their hands were all that clean, ewww. Boys this age are notorious nose and ass pickers. But rules are rules and we had an Iron Chef style ticking clock to beat, so we greased ‘em up and let them dig into the pot and grab handfulls of gooey popcorn and mold them into balls. It was messy. It was sticky. It was germy. But it was really cool. And having all those nice nice moms and dads suddenly listening to me, following my lead, and singing my praises was very empowering. Thank GOD it worked.  Just look at my glistening balls. Aren’t they gorgeous?  

Fast forward to the judging. My husband, who has a talent for garnishing, helped the boys plate up the other dishes and deliver them to the judges with those germy popcorn balls decorating each plate like something you’d see in a real restaurant…and I’m talkin’ about a classy joint like The Cracker Barrel.

You should have heard the “ooohs” and “ahhhhs” from the judges and other campers. The popcorn balls were a HUGE hit. In fact, the lead judge exclaimed that he hadn’t eaten an old-fashioned popcorn ball since he was a child and the nostalgia of it really touched his heart.  Yep, those germy sweet and salty balls o’ mine won our team first place! They even recognized me by name in the award ceremony. It may be one of my proudest moments. (Note to self: never underestimate the power of balls, and also, I really must get out more.)

© 2008 The Bearded Iris

Pretty

My husband recorded part of the Olympics several nights ago to show the kids.  It was the Trampoline Finals (WTF? Who even knew this was an Olympic sport?).  We have a trampoline in our back yard and my kids think they are the shiznit when they do a summersault on it.  ”Look Mom!  LOOK!  WATCH ME!  Are you watching?  Mom LOOK!  I’m gonna do a flip!”  So I watch.  And it is just a summersault.  Not a flip.  But of course I say “Great job honey!” Then I start to panic because I remember reading an article about the dangers of over-praising your kids and I shout “That’s a great summersault!  Keep practicing…you’ll be doing flips in no time!”  So when we watched the Olympic trampolining together and witnessed these incredible young women bounce 3 stories high and do multiple twists and flips and contortions in mid air, you would think my kids would say, “WOW! That is amazing! I wish I could do THAT!” But alas, they did not. My 8 year old son said, completely straight faced, “That is almost exactly the same way I do it.”  And my 5 year old daughter said, “She’s not very pretty.” OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!  Where should I begin?  

Let’s start with the boy. Crap!  I have clearly over-praised this first born son. But, I’m actually rather impressed by his inflated sense of self.  Maybe this will serve him well in life.  If you believe it, you can achieve it, right?  Perhaps I could learn from this child and have a little more faith in my own abilities. Clearly I have done something right as a mother for this boy to have such a positive self esteem.  Now if only I could figure out what that is and apply it to the other two.  

Now for the girl. Oy. I just have one thing to say to all you Disney Princesses out there: FUCK YOU.  My daughter is so amazing.  She is fierce and strong and funny as hell.  She is spirited and spunky and smart. So how is it possible that this feisty young girl, this fruit of my womb, could watch a jaw dropping Olympic feat of strength and skill and not be able to appreciate it because the gymnast wasn’t pretty?  Isn’t strong pretty? Isn’t skill pretty?  Aren’t confidence, determination, focus, and dedication pretty?  I need to do an intervention with this child. Now.  

Disney Princesses, I blame you. You are everywhere my daughter turns. Not just on TV or in movies, but on toys, birthday party invitations, gift wrap, and even little panties. You are in our faces with your animated and unrealistic beauty. You have no moles, age spots, wrinkles, stretch marks, gray hairs, or pimples.  Your teeth are perfectly white.  Animals come to you when you sing.  That is charisma!  Every little girl I’ve ever met wants to be you.  But I am here to say that I see through your cartoony facades.  It is time that someone took you bee-otches back to school.    

Cinderella, yes, your father let you down by not providing for you in his will.  We all have Daddy issues…get over it.  You should have kicked your stepmother’s ass or at least taken her to Royal Court for a portion of the estate.  You did not have to stay there and cook and clean for those bitches and you certainly did not need a charming prince to rescue you. You are no role model, sister. You are a doormat. A very pretty doormat, yes, but not a role model.  Stay away from my daughter.  

Snow White, same to you.  With those organizational skills and innate abilities at communicating with forest animals, you could have had a fabulous career in Zoology or dog whispering.  Shame on you for squandering your talents.  Next time, listen to your parents and don’t talk to strangers bearing gifts.  

Sleeping Beauty – stick that gold plated spinning needle up your animated ass.  Your parents and legal guardians were morons. Nobody should have let you out of their site on your sixteenth birthday.  But they did and of course you touched the needle and poof you are dead….at least until that kiss.  But again with the whole Prince Charming thing….ack.  

Princess Jasmine and Ariel….oppressed by fathers, rescued by princes, yadda yadda yadda.  Can’t we get a good father figure for once here?  And where are the mothers for God’s sake?  No wonder these girls are such a mess.

Belle, I like that you are a voracious reader and want to get out of that poor provincial town.  Yes.  Bravo! However, your shallowness disturbs me.  I do not like that you were unwilling to publicly profess your love for the beast until it was seemingly too late, and that you were rewarded for your lack of committment with his extreme makeover into a handsome human prince.  Good Lord, another prince.  Belle, your behavior perpetuates the practice of judging a book by its cover…ironic, considering your love of books.  You should know better.  (Also, weak father figure and no mother….I’m seeing a pattern here….hmmmm.)  

Mulan, you kick ass girl.  And I like that you defend your father’s honor.  That is good stuff.  Too bad you have to pretend to be a boy in order to achieve your goal.  I guess that doesn’t really promote the “just be yourself” principle.  Damn, thought I had a good one for a minute there.

Thank goodness for Princess Fiona and Shrek, although that is not a Disney flick, which explains a lot.  Well, at least that is a step in the right direction.  Especially in Shrek the Third when all the princesses band together to kick some ass. Good stuff. Unfortunately, I think my daughter is about as impressed with chubby green Fiona as she is with the Canadian gymnasts.  

So, I guess we’ll be doing a Disney Princess moratorium here for a little while. I am also going to take her out of Ballet class before she develops an eating disorder and enroll her in Karate.  I will take her to the library to read books about women like Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman and Rachel Carson…women whose contributions were world changing and totally unrelated to their looks. I will make a concerted effort to stop praising her for looking cute or pretty and instead recognize her for good deeds and fierce determination.  I am going to stop saying things like, “Let’s ask Daddy to fix that when he gets home,” and show her some real girl power when I fix it myself.  I am going to stop making comments about others’ looks and start commenting on others’ contributions to society.  And I am going to stop watching “Bret Michael’s Rock of Love II” reruns.  That shit is just crazy.