What would you name your favorite flush? Royal?
Our household’s new favorite flush is ‘Innocent Blush’, the color of the new toilet in our entry hall powder room.
There are many funny, awkward jokes embedded in that color name of a discontinued toilet. Did the company decide that innocence was lost in a bathroom or that blushing and flushing didn’t jibe? Or? Your guess is as good as mine.
At least Kohler didn’t misappropriate ‘Cover Girl Blush’ for its color name! Not only would that have been copyright infringement, but you gotta admit the similarity in covering one’s cheeks.
Go ahead, laugh out loud. Your privacy is guaranteed.
Let me tell you the whirlwind saga of how we procured the Innocent Blush Flusher, another ‘Living Life as a Miracle’ tale.
It all began with a house guest’s statement: “Your toilet is broken.”
Thank goodness he made conversational eye contact with the man of the house. This was not my problem.
But, California is a ‘community property’ state, so, if half of the house is mine, half of the problems are, too. Argh, my husband sighed, “Another problem of an ‘older’ home: matching the color of the powder room’s pedestal sink, colors that were popular 22 years ago. Holy crap this is not!”
Thank goodness, again, the Thanksgiving holiday intervened: with a week away from our home, on a trip to Elsewhere, CA, my husband could not stew about this sh–.
A couple of days after our return from the fulfilling (in more ways than one) holiday, I trekked to my monthly hair appointment. In the rain that befell our state after a nine month dry spell…
Oops! I arrived early, while the gentleman before me (!) arrived late. (jokes about lateness and male drivers, please)
“No worries,” I said. “I saw a Sale banner on the CalBath business across the street. This is fortuitous. I’ll just stroll over to pass the time.”
“I didn’t even know it was there,” my stylist said.
The street isn’t heavily traveled, so that may have been reason for the sale. I was heartened to jaywalk without incident, without water splashed upon me by a rapidly-passing car or being tripped-up or flattened down. No ‘Singing in the Rain’ Gene Kelly dance routine, either.
Though my bodaciously buckled boots were made for walking… Like Captain Jack Sparrow I swaggered.
Inside the door, I met a generous, helpful blonde woman who I instantly wanted to friend. Proficiency on an iPad was her forte, so I should have suggested Facebook. (writers are fond of high friend tallies, a mandate of our ‘author platform’, which is not about shoes, my friend). She began poking around her iPad, but I wasn’t The Decider, just the Explorer Scout, the accommodating hair cut client. I begged off with a promise to email her photos of our problem area.
I left with my interest piqued, her card in hand, and completed my hair appointment. On a rainy day. While my fine hair fell, my spirits did not.
I was bubbling, burgeoning with good news when I arrived at home. He was impassive, yet quietly thrilled. He’d been ready for a siege of searching all over the LA Basin, as well as the Internet, for the replacement potty, a process of teeth-gnashing months. I saw a small smile of hope.
To my surprise, he took me to CalBath the next day; I wasn’t used to being included in such forays of late, having dawdled in Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Ace Hardwares for hours of my life, intrigued only by the bounce in his step.
For the record, I never require Larry as entourage if/when I clothes shop.
When we sauntered in, the blonde looked wide-eyed, from our faces to the note on her desk to her boss, saying, “I was just going to call you.” He’d apparently just raised his hands to the heavens requesting a customer walk-in. He repeated the gesture now for emphasis – with a huge grin.
We sat for over an hour while the blonde woman pecked and poked on her iPad, with a brief time-out to personally call Kohler HQ. We left with several websites, each of which had the exact model of toilet in the exact color (which the CalBath owner helped us to ascertain with his keychain of samples) at 1/4 the price of present-day models.
In case, you didn’t get the subtext of the interaction, let me state it now: CalBath earned no $$$ from us in the toilet transaction. “It’s good karma,” the lady said. “What goes around, comes around.” I hope you go round their way, on Birch Street in Newport Beach. Karma, by God.
You are welcome to visit our home now as a dinner-and-drinks guest. We’ll be able accommodate you, waste not-want not.
Blondes in tandem can problem-solve. Operation Innocent Blush. Case closed.
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