Can you see me now?

As you may be aware, we are remodeling our bathroom. And it’s taking slightly longer than we thought it would. Back before we started the demolition, The Husband kept telling me that it would take one week. Fortunately, I recognized that he was living in some sort of fantasy land, and knew it would take longer than that. At least three weeks, maybe four.

Oh, how young and naïve we all were.

At any rate, the walls first came down, you could see right into the bathroom from the kitchen and the dining room, because we knocked through the wall between the pantry and bathroom and the doorway between the pantry and kitchen had no actual door. So if you wanted to use the toilet in any kind of privacy, other people in the house had to retreat to the living room.

So one day my father-in-law was up helping out with the construction, and I had to use the bathroom. “No problem,” he said. “I have to go get something from the car anyway.” He headed out, and I pulled down my pants and sat down.

Unfortunately, he only got as far as the landing when his cell phone rang. He answered it, and as he was talking to the person on the other end, he started pacing back and forth. His mind was completely engrossed in the phone call, and he kept walking between the dining room, where he could see me on the toilet, and the landing, where he couldn’t. Meanwhile, I was trapped in a loop of pulling down my pants to sit down on the toilet and leaping up from the toilet and pulling my pants back up. Since he had said he was going to get something from the car, I kept thinking he was leaving when he walked out to the landing, but then back into the dining room he would come.

His phone call sounded important, so I didn’t want to interrupt, but after the seventh time he came back into the dining room, I was forced to call out, “You have to leave!” I finally heard him go down the stairs, and was able, at last, to pee in peace.