Another Post In Which I Complain About My House - and come off sounding totally negative and bitter, which I'm really not. Well, not usually anyway.

Now days, almost every house is built with at least two and a half bathrooms. There's the powder room - for company. The hall bathroom - for the kids. And the giant, massive, so-big-it-needs-its-own-zip code master bathroom including both garden/jet tub AND stand-alone shower. As with every other luxury that has become standard, I believe most people in this country have ceased to appreciate the multi-bathroomed house. With this post I will attempt to bring back some small smidgen of respect and reverence for this incredible advancement of our society.

I was raised in a half-way house. By half-way, I'm referring to the fact that we were half-way to the whole standard bathroom thing. Rather than the two and a half business, we had the full downstairs/company bathroom, and a full upstairs bath (with both shower AND tub). To make up for the lack of an actual "master bath", the upstairs bathroom was attached to my parent's room. Hence, it was technically their bathroom.

But all three of us girls used it every single morning.

Who wanted to go ALL THE WAY downstairs (where it was usually a full twenty degrees colder, I swear) when there was a nice bathroom so conveniently placed? So I was raised with the whole crowded mirror business, and the peeing in front of everyone thing. (Dad was pretty good at hitting the bathroom either before or after we took it over. Poor, poor man. That will teach him to design a house with no master bath!)

Then there was college. Six girls, one tub/shower/toilet, and the standard forty foot vanity with three sinks and fifteen electrical outlets. Each of which must have had their own breaker box, considering the amount of juice they sucked on Sunday mornings. Was anyone else ever amazed that no fuses ever blew, or was it just me?

With marriage came a much more friendly person/bathroom ratio. Being indecent no longer mattered, and sharing was even a little bit nice. Truth to tell, sharing a bathroom with all girls really isn't that bad anyway.

But now I have boys. AND ONE LITTLE BATHROOM!

I'm really not sure why, but sharing with a husband and three small boys is so much worse than any of the other bathroom-sharing I've done. Maybe it's because my children always have to go number two while I'm in the tub. (Those of you familiar with my frequent and very long/hot baths are sure to understand how irritating this phenomena actually is). No one ever knocks on the bathroom door - which doesn't lock. Every Sunday morning, my husband manages to get in the shower precisely when I begin trying to either fix my hair or do my makeup. Ever try to use a mirror while someone's showering???

When you only have one bathroom, the clothes people shed, and the dirt that comes with them (three little boys and a husband who works construction) are a CONSTANT problem. And have I mentioned the pee? There's a reason why my children aren't allowed to pee standing up until they can prove their accuracy. With that much male-peeing traffic on one toilet, cleaning the commode can be an hourly job.

That is, if you want the ONLY company bathroom in the house to be presentable should someone stop by and need to use it - or walk by it, since it's DOWNSTAIRS, and right in the middle of the front room.

There is absolutely no hiding my bathroom from anyone. Please tell me that someone, somewhere, is beginning to fall for this pathetic (and overly obvious) plea for sympathy.

When I say that the bathroom is located downstairs, I want to make perfectly clear that the bedrooms (all TWO of them) are not. They (the bedrooms) are very much upstairs affairs. This is not fun when you're pregnant. Or when you have a child who constantly wakes up and has to pee in the middle of the night but doesn't want to have to go downstairs alone. Or when someone comes to you in the small hours of the morning to tell you they're about to throw-up. At times like this, the bathroom may as well be at the neighbor's.

And so I go on day after day, dreaming of that blessed, long looked for event, when we move from this house to one with multiple bathrooms. And please do not try to tell me that it will just be a big pain because there will be more bathroom cleaning to do. This will not work on me. I have suffered too long with bathroom sharing, and would be THRILLED to have the boys clean their toilet while I clean mine.

So go now, Dear Reader, and resume your happy, multi-bathroomed lives, in your happy, multi-bathroomed houses - with your guests using your lovely little powder rooms, and the ability to tell your children to take their BM's someplace else whilst you luxuriate in your master-jetted-garden-tub.

And maybe, just maybe, you will appreciate the sheer luxury of the master bath just a little bit more after reading this post. Occasionally thinking of me and offering a silent prayer that I will someday be released from the purgatory that is one-bathroom-and-six-people-four-of-them-males would also be a nice idea. You know, proving to the Universe at large just how much you care about people you don't really know.

I would really, REALLY appreciate this kind of thoughtfulness. Fasting is also an option. You know, for those Sunday's when you forget to eat breakfast, and then get to church and realize it's Fast Sunday but don't really have anything specific to fast for? Yeah, just think of me. You can call it the "Jen's bathroom fast". And all the while you'll know that I'm here, in my one-bathroomed house, just trying to take my shower and put my makeup on in peace and solitude.

And that it probably isn't happening.