One Holer or Two

You may want to close out and not finish reading this, but again, you may not.   I feel this topic needs to be addressed. 

Where I work, the floor has three offices-the IT Dept. (mostly men); 4-H (mostly women); and the County Extension Agency (mostly women).  The Women’s restroom is by the IT Department.  The Men’s is by the other two offices.  It isn’t a short trek to either restroom for either office.  So whom every designed the building or assigned the offices obviously hadn’t Nature’s business in mind. There are many times workers have wished, ranted, or cursed the locality of their prospective facilities.  I’ve even had a coworker stand guard as I bolted to the Men’s Room knowing full well I wouldn’t make it down the hall. It shouldn't have to be this way.

While traveling around this beautiful country of ours, I have issues with restrooms across the land.  I’m obviously not the only one, since there are several phone apps out there helping you with anything from cleanliness ratings to locality.  I have one on my phone.  Which, I got razzed about on my last trip with my parents (and my mother was grateful for, btw)!  Regardless of popular belief, I DO NOT know every potty stop along the I-15 Corridor (almost, but not quite), so this app comes in handy.

One of my pet peeves is going into restrooms that are one-holers or just have one toilet.  Usually, there is a line of women wrapped around the store or rest stop waiting.  Some have small children doing the potty-dance.  Others, like me, are doing the potty dance.  While the poor woman who has finally got her turn is thinking about all the others standing out there with crossed legs.

 

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I simply can’t go with others ‘out there.’  It’s almost like you’re camping and sitting on that outhouse toilet with cold air whooshing up privates—instant shutoff.     Men—don’t laugh.  Your plumbing’s different. Please don’t judge us, because it is a problem!  

So, I try to avoid one-holers at all costs.  I just can’t relax.  I know others out there lurking.  If I’m forced to use one, nothing is worse than showing up right before a bus unloads.  Then the race is on!  I need to be washing up before the first old lady tourist is banging on my door or that’s it for me and my travel companions.  We either wait until the bus pulls out for me to relax, or we stop at every available bathroom for the next hour.

Two-holers are almost as bad as the one.  There may be TWO toilets, but you never knows what you’ll find in (or on) that one.  Let me give you examples of what I’ve found:

·         Clogged holers

·         Flooded holers

·         Smeared holers

·         Peed-on holers

·         Paperless holers

·         Lockless holers

·         Broken holers

·         Peep Hole Holers

·         Made-for-Toothpick Holers

Are you getting my drift?  And it never fails, if there are TWO stalls, the one I dash into, is usually a Made-for Toothpick and a Paperless one and the individual in the other one has only one square herself.  None to spare.

I have learned to carry rolls of TP in my car for this very purpose.  One day, while driving in the mountains, I was the hero of all the women (and some men).  I was the only one who had TP and hand sanitizer for the almost overflowing outhouse by a popular fishing hole.  Thank you, Mom, for teaching me this habit!!!

For many with MS, bladder issues are a problem, me being one of them.  But even before I was blessed with this illness, Rick has joked with me I have a bladder the size of a thimble.  I can’t help it if having children messed up the my waterworks.  I have a few suggestions that help me get from Point A to Point B without having to stop every 30 minutes.  Mind you, these don’t always work, but it’s usually enough to get me to a multi-stall unit.

1.       Don’t dehydrate yourself.  I’ve learned the hard way by going with minimal liquid for the whole day before and on the day of travel.  Boy, you want to talk about being sick and light-headed.

A.      Drink lots of fluids-just not caffeinated ones.  My drink of choice is Diet DP.  Giving it up while traveling is very, very hard.  But also running to the bathroom every 30 mins OR the thought of not being able to find a potty stop in time was enough to cure me of in taking the Nectar of the Gods for a few days.

B.      By lots of fluids, don’t be switching your 100 oz of MT Dew for 100 oz of Blue Powerade.  I always told my son he was drinking blue toilet water when he switched to this.  Trust me, if you drink 100 oz of it, you’ll be peeing it.  Not good.

C.      Avoid foods that will make you want to drink more.  Snacking while you’re driving is a great way to stay awake, but when I eat beef jerky, sun flower seeds, and Gardeto’s I always need to drink more.  Don’t you?

2.       Sometimes the food you DO eat makes you stop more.  My absolute favorite food in the whole world is spicy Mexican food--the hotter and spicier, the better.  While I was in Mexico with my husband, finding clean bathrooms you didn’t have to pay for was very difficult.  AND, you had to pay a separate fee for the TP.  Like I am going to use the toilet without TP?!  I didn’t even want to think about people who didn’t have money to pay for TP.  Maybe they had a few tissues in their pockets like I did when I had to use a cathedral’s restroom-free but no TP.

A.      Spicy foods

B.      Citrus-like orange juice

C.      Tomato-based foods

3.       Concentrate on something else.  As a young girl, I used to hate it when my mother would tell me to go into the bathroom and try to go.  I would whine and say I didn’t have to.  She would tell me to just think about it and I could go.  Well, there is no amount of thinking that will get me to GO now.  But there are a few little things that will help me NOT to go.

A.      Reading a book.

B.      Playing a mind-numbing game on my phone.

C.      Talking to someone in the car.

D.      Falling asleep.

4.     If you see a rest stop sign, DON’T second-guess yourself.  STOP!!! Here is one of my scenarios: Rick asks me if I need to stop.  In my mind, I waffle back and forth thinking, “Do I? Don’t I?  Can I make it? This is the yucky one with the one-holer and sticky floor.  The next one is only 20-miles ahead.  Ya, ya, I can make it.”  Only to have my bladder give the tell-tale twinge as the car is speeding by the on-ramp.  Those 20-miles are grueling even when he’s speeding and griping at me about not pulling over, even though he asked.  Every bump feels like a crater the car is bottoming out in and I just know I’ll be flooding the front seat as we’re pulling off in the 10 minutes it takes to drive the 20 miles.

Have a learned my lesson?  No.  I still think I can make it.  Do I?  Yes, but by the skin of my teeth with Rick dragging me and my bum leg to the women’s (or men’s) restroom.  It is SO not worth the stress-his or mine.  So why do I do it? 

A.      Positive thinking? Yes.

B.      Pride? Don’t think so.

C.      Not wanting to be a bother? Most definitely.

D.      Want to get to my destination? For sure!

E.       Better,cleaner bathrooms?  Sometimes.

Whatever my reasons are I’ve learned to deal with my bladder issues.  I’ve staked out the terrain on the roadways between my destinations most traveled, so I no longer have to deal with minimal holers.  And if the time comes where I do travel to uncharted territory, I have my trusty app by my side to protect me from unsuspecting dancing partners, long lines, and shortages of paper.