The Return of the Dirty Feet
When I moved out here to California in 2020, I assumed I would be wearing shorts year-round. It sure started out that way, but by November I was feeling like long pants were still an important part of my wardrobe. That whole time when I wore shorts, I wore Crocs on my feet every day. Over that period of time I increasingly spent my time working in the gardens. I found that as I began to increasingly get down on my knees in the dirt, shorts were more a liability than an asset. In addition to that, when I wear shorts I am unlikely to ride my motorcycle. A short local jaunt is OK, but any serious riding demands at very least a pair of long pants and something resembling real shoes or boots. But it was the cooler weather that caused me to switch to long pants that November, and I stayed in them until at least March. It began to dawn on me that I would be dealing with seasonal clothing selection wherein I would wear shorts for seven or eight months and long pants for the rest of the year. Last summer I felt like I had worked it all out and rotated some days wearing my Duluth work pants with socks and work boots, and other days being more carefree with shorts and Crocs.
What I have learned over time is that Crocs are simply no compatible with yard work. One reason is that work on a rocky hillside demands a firmer shoe or boot and the other is that there is always the risk of stepping on some rattlesnake and having my bare ankle right there for the biting. The other side-effect of wearing Crocs is that the naturally aeration of the shoe is such that its the closest thing to running around barefoot that you can get. And that means that at the end of the day when I take my Crocs off, I am staring at a pair of very dirty feet, both top and bottom. The toes get particularly filthy thanks to all the little holes in the Crocs. I don’t think that this cleanliness problem would ever stop me from wearing Crocs, but it might very well stop me from working in the garden when I was wearing my Crocs.
This winter I have either gotten softer with thinner blood or it has been a longer, wetter, colder winter than normal. My brother-in-law assured me it was a normal winter, but I still have my doubts as I wrap up April. April is that month is AFTER the in-like a lion, out like a lamb month and that makes it a month when out here it should be a pussycat of a month weather-wise. But it has been less so than I would have expected. There have been a few days in the 80s, and may even have touched 90 one or two days, but judging by my wardrobe selection, it has mostly not been shorts weather. That makes it more like the Northeast than what I expect from Southern California.
I find myself watching the weather app more closely than normal for some signs of warmer weather. This week, Sunday and Monday were supposed to be particularly warm (which I now define as touching 80), so yesterday I wore my shorts and Crocs. I didn’t have any major landscaping projects underway, but I did have to go down the hillside to place a new metal sculpture (yes, I can’t help myself but keep adding to the attraction). The rest of the day I did some errands in the Tesla, going to a plumbing showroom to look at possible new faucets for the bathroom and to a new garden center over by the Ocean. Neither of those activities were expected to dirty my feet, but I must admit that the faucet expedition did curl my toes a bit. Replacing the hardware for two and a half baths came in at over four thousand dollars. Given that we want everything to match, the problem does not lie with the five sinks that would get new faucets, but with the two tubs and three showers (the master has a double shower set-up). It seems that the shower and tubs are no simple swap-out for the hardware, but require a replacement of the entire shower body (inside the wall) and the same sort of thing, but smaller, for the tubs.
I would literally have to put up with blowing out the walls and tiling of all four fixtures in order to replace the hardware. At best I figure that would add another two to three thousand dollars to the cost of the replacement. What I have in place are brushed nickel fixtures in what is called a “ringed Bauhaus” design. To be honest, I would prefer a simpler, cleaner line in the faucets, but there is nothing about the existing faucets that troubles me too much. The design is not offensive and Kim even calls them as in-keeping with the craftsman aspects in the design of the house. That makes me want to describe our house as a Southwestern adobe-like craftsman designed house. Think of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West with its Southwestern variation on the FLW modernist design. As it turns out, Bauhaus was deeply influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright and its common thread has been about form meeting function and the outside of the house reflecting the inside and vice versa. So, Kim is spot on in thinking that the Bauhaus nickel faucets and fixtures are very consistent with the rest of the house’s architecture and style.
In keeping with the functionality dictum of FLW and Bauhaus, I have been forced by the economics of the situation to consider the need for replacing the faucets altogether. When I bought the house and had a review done of the plumbing, it was suggested that I might want to consider replacing the hardware at a cost of six thousand dollars. I passed on that, but now realize that was less of an egregious bid than I had thought at the time. Nonetheless, I am far less keen on ripping apart the perfectly functional showers and baths (the baths in particular are barely used). I find myself thinking that metal is supposed to last a lifetime and perhaps there is way to fix the faucets rather than discard them. That seems functional in a way that must be respected by FLW and Bauhaus (as though either would really care). So, after returning from the plumbing supply showroom I got out a combination of a sanding sponge, a task, a wire brush and some tarnish remover. I went at it, starting on my sink in the master bath. I had noticed that my faucet was getting scaled-up with calcium and some residue that had a bluish tinge. I found that all that went away quite quickly under the abrasion of the wire brush and sanding sponge. In fact, that in combination with the Tarnex did a fine job of making the faucet and the handles look new. I was suddenly very proud of myself and my inner frugality. I did the same on Kim’s faucets. These fixtures didn’t need to be replaced, they needed maintenance and appreciation for what they represent.
I feel like I earned six or seven thousand dollars today and that is always a good feeling. The truth is that I just came to my senses and chose to maintain rather than discard a perfectly workable piece of house history. I was richly rewarded by Kin asking me to do the same maintenance on the other two bathrooms. No good deed goes unpunished. And when the day was done and I chose to put my feet up, I removed my Crocs and found my feet filthier than I can remember. I think it had more to do with my one trip down the hillside through the 100 yards of bark mulch that I now have on it, rather than the time spent in plumbing maintenance. Nevertheless, since I couldn’t imagine putting those dirty dogs into a clean bedsheet, I did what all working men do and showered before bed. In this case I spent extra time scrubbing my feet clean and remembering that we are none of us very far removed from the return of dirty feet on any given day.