The Long Haul

This book is going to be the death of me.

This is the second time I've borrowed it out and both times I renewed it twice and this time it's overdue.

A month overdue.

Do you have any idea how much I hate having overdue books out from the library?

It's a lot.

But I cannot cannot CANNOT return this book until I've finished it.

Not this time!

And the really sad thing, the incredibly sad thing, is what the book is.

It's Australian Politics For Dummies.

How much of a dummy do you have to be for it to take you this long to read a book?

I keep picking it up at the end of the day and either I'm too tired and I start nodding off or it's making me tired.

The material is interesting enough but obviously it's very factual and a bit dry and you aren't really motivated to rush to the end and find out 'who did it' because it's politics, they all did it.

I would honestly have chucked it in the first time round except for three things:

1. I refuse to be defeated by any book with 'For Dummies' in the title.
2. This is stuff I really feel I should have a good handle on by now seeing as I'm an adult voting person.
3. I HAVE ALREADY WRITTEN IT DOWN IN MY READING JOURNAL AND ONCE I HAVE WRITTEN IT DOWN IN MY READING JOURNAL I HAVE TO FINISH IT.

The Reading Journal is a sacred trust.
I can't have unfinished entries in my Reading Journal.
It would be unthinkable.
I know a lot of people have rules about how much of their time they'll give a book before they give it up as a bad lot.

Wil Wheaton has said he has a '100 pages or 1 hour' rule and if it hasn't caught his interest by then, it's toast.

I can respect that.

Life is too short to waste it trudging through terrible books.

Normally I don't have that trouble because if a book is truly TRULY that heinous, I'll have noticed before I get around to jotting its details down in the Reading Journal.

Some cruddy books I'll finish out of a sort of perverse bloody-mindedness because I want to be able to tell other people in excruciating detail exactly how bad it was from one end to another.

But this book isn't bad, it's just dense because of its subject matter, and I'm just being weird and lazy about getting it read.

I've been avoiding reading it because I can't be arsed but this means I haven't been reading much else either, and I miss reading, proper reading.

So now I am rolling my sleeves up, taking myself by the ear and not putting up with any more of my rubbish.

I will finish this book in the next few days.

I will return it to the library.

I will apologise profusely and pay my fine.

Then I will get on with my life.

There are too many other books waiting for me out there to let this go on any longer.

Coffee-Related Karmic Realignment

To all the people who ordered decaf beverages when I was a barista, I want to say I'm sorry.

Don't worry, I definitely definitely served you decaf and the beverages I provided were of the highest quality I could turn out because I took pride in my work.

But I thought uncharitable things about you as I did it.

I thought stuff like:

"If you're worried about not being able to get to sleep just don't have coffee after 4pm! Why ruin a perfectly good drink with decaf?"

OR

"If you're going to drink decaf why even freaking bother? It isn't proper coffee anyway?"

OR

"Ooh lah-di-dah, look at you taking charge of your health by limiting stimulants!"

I am really, really sorry.

I never gave any indication of what I was thinking and you probably didn't know but my sending out those sorts of negative thoughts into the universe was unkind and now I know exactly how bollocks they were.

Now that I can't have caffeine, I drink decaf.

I drink it because I really really miss coffee and it's the closest I can have.

I'm not drinking it to be pretentious or smug or because I'm a nervous little nelly who thinks a little fizz in my life will send me reeling off balance; I'm drinking it because if I have the caffeinated version I loved so much I could get sick.

I don't know how many people I served decaf to who might have been in a similar boat.

People trying to avoid antagonising heart conditions, stomach conditions, nervous system conditions, anxiety conditions, even respiratory conditions.

Maybe it was very few of them.

I have no idea.

The point is that I have no idea what their circumstances were and it wasn't my place to judge and now that I'm in the situation I am now, I know that.

I also know that not only wasn't it my place to judge but that that they should never have to explain themselves to me or anyone else or feel obligated to defend their choices.

The same way that people who drink skim/low-fat milk shouldn't have to identify whether it's because they believe that the doctors who say full cream milk is until the age of 5 and no further are right, or because they're worried about their weight or because they've had their gallbladder removed and letting fat build up in their system is painful.

The same way that people who drink soy shouldn't have to identify whether they're lactose intolerant, vegan or just really like the taste of soy.

So to all of you out there, who probably don't remember me and never knew I was being uncharitable in your direction, I send out this big pulse of positive thoughts and apology.

You'll probably be equally as unaware of it as you were of my initial cynicism but I'm sending it to you anyway and I hope that wherever you are that things are going OK for you.

A Life Wasted?

My father recently turned 60 and as a surprise for him, my sister and I put together a couple of photo-boards to display at his birthday party.

We sat down and went through our entire family cache of photos, picked out any photo of sufficient quality that featured Dad, scanned it, had it printed out and added it to the board.

They went down a treat with the family, especially the photos which hadn't been seen in decades and which they'd forgotten.

They were a major talking point and had clusters of people hanging about them for the entire duration of the party.

I was really pleased to have played a part in their creation and giving everyone a chance to reminisce and giggle at what my father used to look like and get up to but it also made me realise something.

I have straight up been wasting my life.

Flicking through the photos of myself so far it was absolutely clear to me that I have not anywhere near been living up to my potential or exploring all the opportunities available to me.

When I saw the pictures of my mother and all the incarnations of her glorious hair...

I have been rocking the same handful of hairstyles for my entire life, none of which seem particularly evocative of their time period or make me look outlandishly different from year to year.

In the photos I found of my mother she sported:

• A magnificent curly afro
• A sleek long bob with matching fringe
• A mane of hair down to her bum
• Charlie's Angels flicky hair
• The obligatory 80s perm
• A cute curly shoulder-length do with a sideways swept fringe
  
• Her current pixie cut

Anyone in the future looking to catalogue my life and reviewing my photos up until now will be barfing to themselves in quiet boredom over the uniform monotony of my hair.

There have been a few changes but none so striking and the biggest changes have been the occasional shift in hue.

I know there are reasons for this...

• my laziness
• the unpredictable and willful nature of my follicles
• the fact that most of the hairstyles that have been 'fashionable' during my hairstyling years have been almost unfailingly terrible *coff Jennifer Aniston coff*

... but I still feel that I'm letting future biographers or possible descendents down by not offering a full catalogue of wild and wonderful photo material for them to pore over.

Even my father has sported a wider range of dos - though admittedly some of them were on his face.

The question now is, is it too late for me?

Am I too set in my boring hair ways?

Are there any dos that will be considered as time-bound and awesome as those that preceded the 90s?

Could I have taken a less superficial message from almost a century of family photos*?

Maybe I could have, maybe I could have...



*Out of interest we went all the way back through photos that featured the younger incarnations of our grandparents and great-grandparents too.

Give 'Em Some Slack And Then Reel 'Em In!

Amongst the new experiences I had on my trip to New Zealand*, my favourite by far was charter fishing.

The sunburn I managed to get on my shoulders aside, it was a great day out.

I've never been anti-fishing but I've discovered that what makes the experience absolutely fantastic is:

1. Having all the right equipment.
   
2. Going with somebody who knows what they're doing.

Baiting the hook I'm fine with.

Casting or releasing the line - in the case of weighted-line fishing, which this was - again, completely fine.

Reeling the fish in and using a cloth to grasp it when taking it off the hook so its spines don't stab you in the hand**, no problemo.

Killing the fish and turning it from entire creature into edible chunks, errr...

It isn't that I have a moral objection to killing the fish.

As an omnivore, I believe that any animals within the normally accepted 'edible' subcategory' raised and killed humanely are fair and delicious game.

I've just not been taught how to do it and have no practice and wouldn't want to bodge it up and cause the fish distress.

But the guy who took us out on his boat not only had good quality fishing rods, a suitable vessel, and built-in chopping boards and knives set up for cutting up your appropriate bait; he also swiftly and efficiently dispatched our fishy bounty and then skillfully turned them into fillets on the spot!

With all the equipment provided being of proper quality and suitable to the task everything runs a lot more smoothly than if you - as a casual fisherwoman - try and get the same results with a kit you've bodged together without quite knowing what you're up to or wanting to spend too much money in case it turns out that you're rubbish at fishing.

Without having to worry about inept or accidentally cruel fish execution, the 5 hour jaunt was one of the most relaxing and enjoyable afternoons I've spent in a while.

I think between the four of us we reeled in about 40 fish.

We only got to keep about 16 as the others didn't meet legal size requirements but that's OK.

There's only so much fish you can eat and as most of the fun is reeling them in, it was no hardship to throw the lucky tiddlers back to try again.

And apart from the fact fishing is a lot of fun, and that the sun on the waves*** and the light breeze and the scent of salt on the air were wonderfully soothing, when we did get our bag of ice and neatly sliced fillets home, the fish was delicious.

Del-ic-ious.

So moist and tender and fresh and full of flavour!

Just a touch of lemon and pepper and it was one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten.

At some point in the future I intend to go fishing again.

And for maximum fish and fun, it'll be with someone who knows what they're doing.

*One of which was taking an overnight flight, getting into Auckland at 5:20am and then waiting until the sun came up to get the bus to the ferry terminal because I didn't want to be found at dawn bobbing up and down in the water like a crime drama cadaver.

**They were predominantly snapper.

***And on my stupid shoulders which I kept forgetting every time I reapplied sunscreen to my arms.

How The Imperial System Was Repurposed To Keep The Empress Down

I've recently finished reading the archives of the excellent webcomic I Think You're Saucesome by Sarah Becan which she created to document her journey as she attempted to get fit, eat well and confront her body image issues.

I feel it's been a privilege to be invited into her personal life and it's been wonderful to see the progression of her awareness, confidence and acceptance of self and gradual easing of her insecurities and the unhappiness they brought.


And oh my goodness the food illustrations!
Sarah eats a varied and wonderful range of foods from a swathe of different cultures and as she has shared this, I've found myself making lists of things that I definitely need to try.


One of the other things I was reminded of was the treacherous nature of the unit of measurements that is 'pounds'.

I have long thought that pounds was an evil unit of measurement and this has been confirmed over and over again by listening to and reading the way that the women who use it to assess themselves talk about them and how that impacts their self-image and mental health.

For starters, for anyone who doesn't know, 1 kg is equivalent to 2.2 lbs.

This fundamentally alters the way you think about weight gain and loss.

'Oh no I've gained a pound' once translated to the equivalent of metric equals...
'Oh no, I've gained 450 g!'

That's nothing. That's a good meal that your body hasn't had time to process and push out your poop chute.

That's forgetting to take your shoe off.

And the higher the measurement gets, the more marked the effect becomes.

Being able to say 'I've lost 20 lbs' might make it sound more substantial and impressive but it also means that gaining 20 lbs will be more depressing.

Gaining 9 kg can be a bit of a downer in the wrong circumstances but hey, at least it's not in the double digits.

I know that a person who is used to the imperial system won't think that 132 lb sounds huge compared to 60 kg as they have context and know what the actually represents.

But the itty bitty increments, they can drive you crazy.

It seems that it makes you hyper-aware, the slightest shift is noted and assigned a higher significance.

The emotive value attached to each pound is equivalent to or even greater than the value or importance that is attached by metric folk to each kilo.

The actual 'mass to mental/emotional investment' seems exhausting.

And that, I believe is the point.

You think the introduction of the metric system to the United States failed because of resistance from the public or big business or due to a residual cultural impulse to continue to flip Europe the bird?
Not a bit of it.

The pill was approved for contraceptive use in 1960 and the two presidents who attempted to introduce the metric system were Gerald Ford (1974-1977) and Jimmy Carter (1977-1981).

So, between 14 to 21 years on from the introduction of the pill it was becoming apparent that now women didn't have to be worried about being pregnant all the time, they had time to think about other things and ask questions and do things and go outside.

This did not sit well with the traditional leaders of the land, the big movers and shakers in the doodle community, and they knew they had to do something to keep women distracted.
Hence the boom in advertising and the fashion industries that had been building and gaining speed since the 1960s.
If they allowed the shift to metric, what would happen to all their hard work on the importance of female body image?
It would be partially mitigated.

That and the cultural and sociological belief that women have weaker mathematical and spatial awareness skills that could be further confused by the crazy-pants arbitrary measurements that make up feet, yards and miles, cemented the Imperial system in place in the United States.

Yes, that's right, the imperial system is a patriarchal plot.

Designed to over-complicate and over-emphasise what should be a much less involved issue.

I know it didn't start out that way, it was just an adorable set of arbitrary measurements.
The length of a foot, how far a healthy man can walk in a day, the width of three chickens roosting side-by-side...

But after a while, once humankind developed accurate tools for measurement that weren't physically attached to the tallest man in the village, why on Earth would you keep using those units if it wasn't an underlying and sinister motivation?

Because they think they make sense? Pfft! Please!


I'll admit that I've believed some crazy things in my day but I'm not going to fall for that one!

I'm not that gullible!

Daughter Of Planning Hermit: This Time It's Personal

To counteract the frowny-face head-shaking nature of the last post, here are a couple more things I would like in my imaginary 'some day' house*.


Dish Draining Cupboard


My Auntie Lina** and Uncle Ugo have one in their apartment in Torino and it is just an insanely good idea. It keeps the dishes out of the way, it allows them to drain somewhere that's designed to get wet, it allows a lot more space than a traditional dish drying rack, it's not cluttering up your bench space, and when it's time to put them away you just pop the cupboard open and take things out in an orderly fashion.

If I wanted to have the sink facing a window I'd have to rethink design but I think I could make it work.


Tilt-Turn Windows


These I also saw for the first time in Italy and they're wonderfully practical.

You turn the knob one way a certain amount and the windows open up properly and you can stick your head out and see who is at the door/what the person down the street is yelling about/whether there is a vicious xenomorph hiding in the shrubbery beneath your window***.

You turn the knob the other way a certain/different amount and the window pops out at the top allowing the passage of cool, fresh air into the room and hot stuffy air out of the room without having to open the entire arrangement.

Living in Australia this means I'd have to have fly wire outside to keep myself from being eaten alive by mosquitoes when I left the window top agape but I figure that could be managed.
Either just by having tilt-turn windows that open inwards, or by having inward opening tilt-turn windows and outward opening flyscreen panels.
I'd prefer the second option because that preserves the ability to stick your head out and have a nosey about.
As an Aussie I've almost never been able to do this because of fly wire being in the way.
It looks like so much fun in the movies...

I also like the Norwegian windows that have a set of windows that swing inwards on the inner edge of the frame and a second set that swing outwards on the outer edge of the frame that allow better insulation in winter but again I'd have to make allowances for flyscreens.
Maybe a rectangle of flywire secured by magnet strips that I could remove or attach at will...


French Doors In The Master Bedroom

I love French doors. These arched ones below are particularly gorgeous.


Now whether they open onto a balcony as shown here or a private courtyard as shown below will depend on how many storeys my imaginary house has and which level I chose to put my bedroom on.


The important thing is that they should be there, they should allow me to move from my bedroom to a relaxing section of the outside world and they should let copious amounts of lovely fresh air and outdoors smells into my bedroom whenever I should wish it!


Dutch Doors


This is another thing you don't see in Australia often, partially due to the aforementioned mosquitoes and so on but also because it just wasn't one of the things the Dutch saw fit to bring over or to share with the rest of us if they did.
I'm still a bit hurt about that, the Dutch.

I mean, look at how lovely they are!


You can get a bit of fresh air**** without letting pets or children wander in or out willy-nilly when they shouldn't.

You can chat to people who are outside when you're inside or vice-versa, hear things that are going on without having to open windows or doors, shut two parts of a door on somebody one after the other to emphasise how displeased you are!

Versatile!


Bathroom Fernery


My grandmother's house has a well-established fernery outside the bathroom window and it is the most absurdly soothing thing.

With the combination of the plants in the fernery and the shade-cloth that protects them, the light levels in the bathroom are gently muted, slightly green and it is always cool and refreshing.

It lets you feel like you're near nature without having to struggle to keep plants alive indoors or deal with the shed leaves, incumbent spiders or other such things.

It ensures privacy - none of that everyone can see your private moments tosh - and overall just gives the room a nice atmosphere.


Alcove Beds


A little room within a room.

A little nook to squirrel yourself away in and - depending on design - remain unseen.


Novel, an interesting use of space, and in some cases almost like having a secret room out in the open.

When I was a kid I imagined being able to turn my bed into a little secret room, I put bookshelves under my bunk bed in such a way that I had a little room underneath my bed, but if you'd told tiny me that these sorts of bed designs actually existed I would have lost my tiny mind.

Especially if it had a built-in book case and looked like it had been nicked from Aladdin.



Courtyard


There will be one. Yes there will.
It might not necessarily look like this one but look at that lighting.
Innit nice?

A nice place to relax and kick back by yourself or entertain if you feel so inclined.


Now I am aware that some of these features may make my house more susceptible to access by general intruders, thieves, weirdoes and zombies but I'll take measures to dissuade that during the planning stages.
I wouldn't want to get lax and then have to spend hours scrubbing brains and blood out of the nice rugs and wooden floors I'm planning on having.



*I am aware that if I did try and cram all the features listed here and in other posts into one house, it probably would end badly for me, for the house, and for my sanity and bank balance.
A girl can still dream though.
A girl can dream.

**Well, she's my grandmother's cousin but we call her Auntie Lina, and that makes her husband Uncle Ugo.

***Well the information will serve the people behind you well. You know very well what form the confirmation of presence will take.

****Are you sensing a theme yet?

Things I DON'T Want In My House

In a 'fortunate for me, not so great for them' fashion I've been noticing items in other people's houses that would drive me up the freaking wall.

I say 'not so great for them' not because my displeasure will rain down upon them like the wrath of the gods but because these are usually permanent features of their freshly built or bought homes.

Maybe they don't notice the features I'm referring to or if they do, they don't bother them or maybe they like them*; I just know they're not for me.

In any case, these items are on the 'not if I can help it list' for inclusion in my imaginary 'some day' house.


Push Plug Sinks


In case you don't know what I meant by push-plug**, I meant this.

I dislike them.

These drive me inordinately nuts.

You have to push them down to lock them in place and push them down again to release them.

Seems easy enough except for when they break and then you can't seal your sink or if they get stuck and you can't let what's in the sink drain away or if you have something fall down the hole that you could have hooked out if you could see what you were doing or if you get a build up of gunge in there and using a plunger doesn't work properly because every time you try to suction the gunge up with the plunger, you accidentally press the stupid button and seal the sink.

In short, they're stupid and in no way as efficient as a plug.

Sure, plugs aren't attached and I guess in theory they can get lost but they're not prohibitively expensive and they work without hindering functionality.


Novelty Basins Of Any Description


No.


No.


No.


No.


No.


God, no. (And really, watermark thingie? House beautiful? Is that a claim you're willing to stand by?)

Sinks should be set in the countertop, they should be a certain depth and the tap should be positioned and designed in such a fashion that if you need to get your head underneath it you can.
Quickly and comfortably.

You get something in your eyes that you should not have gotten in your eyes are you going to want a strangely shaped basin that more often that not is so poorly designed that it has you splashing water everywhere but the sink? Or do you want a sink you can get your face into so you can wash anything dangerous off as quickly as possible without hurting yourself?

And cleaning around those amazing unique sinks looks complicated and unnecessary.
It's just a bunch of new crevices for mold to grow in and areas to bang or scrape your fingers on as you try to access them.


Angled Shower Bottoms

I don't have a photo for this one yet but essentially the floor of the shower is raised in the centre, sloping outwards and downwards to a channel that runs around the outside edge of the shower and encourages the water towards the drain.

I guess this is supposed to discourage stagnant water that might sit around being gross, encouraging the development of soap scum, and harbouring pubic hairs.

What it really does is turn the shower into a hazard that risks turning an able bodied person into a disabled person and a disabled person into a dead person.

News flash, geniuses! Shower floors are slippery! And when you angle them... people slip! And when they try and regain their balance... they stub their toes in your dumb water channels which you engineered to solve a problem that no-one ever has ever complained about.


Covered Shower Drains

Ditto with the photo thing for now.

The idea here is that they've placed a little raised cap over the shower drain so the water goes in without you having to look into the gross yucky hole!

It also means you can't clean the gross yucky hole which after a year probably has a Rapunzel-worth of hair hanging down in a long, mold clogged tail of disgustingness that allows the shower water to drain away in a slow fashion that won't startle it or allow anything else washed down the drain the chance to slip away too quickly before being gathered into The Collective.

I'm pretty sure The Collective will give you some kind of disease.

Plus if you like stubbing your toes, here's another charmer!


Certain Surfaces In Bathrooms, Kitchens And Laundries


Namely, fake marble or fake anything else counters made from synthetic materials.

Synthetic materials that are easily scratched, may discolour when you put a hot pot down on them and after a relatively short amount of time look completely beat up.

My bathroom counters will get splashed and shouldn't be made of something that will warp from the damp or develop little tide marks no matter how quickly you clean up after said splashing.

My kitchen counters will have hot pots put on them, they will have meat mallets used on them, they will have pasta makers clamped to them.

They'll take a beating and I intend for them to be made of a material that will survive this intact, looking OK and won't cause me health problems.

If a stone counter top - entire or compressed - has issues that would render them too expensive or too impractical then they're off the list.

If the wooden one would prove a health hazard if improperly cured or cared for, I may even get one with a hard-working boring industrial kitchen veneer over the top.

Whatever it's made of it'll be in a colour and style where it won't matter or show up if it scratches, won't dent and I won't give a tinker's cuss about spilling food upon.

Counter's are for using. Not for fussing over and protecting.


Floor-To-Ceiling Windows


Every second house built or renovated on Grand Designs seems to feature or be primarily composed of floor-to-ceiling windows.

They have a lot of drawbacks.

They transmit heat too readily making a house hard to cool in the summer or heat in the winter without the heat effect you're trying to achieve and maintain leeching away.

If you put up curtains to counteract this effect, and have to keep them closed for a goodly portion of the year you may as well not have floor-to-ceiling windows at all.

They'd be a bugger to clean and you'd have to clean them regularly to keep them from getting scummy or making the place look untidy.

It would be simplicity itself for a ravening horde of zombies or post-apocalyptic cannibal humans to just smash their way into your house unless you spring for reinforced magic glass which very few people do.

I'll admit that if you have a particularly gorgeous view they may be warranted in one room of the house, that's one, but let's not go crazy.


Recessed Down Lights


These are so poorly designed.

Even if you get the right size and intensity globe for your fixtures, often the heat from operating your light - a not unreasonable thing to want to do - will warp and discolour the housing it sits in.

I've been in houses, brand new houses, where the down lights are dangling out of the ceilings on their wiring because the heat of operating the down light weakened the glue or whatever held it in place and caused it to drop out of the roof.

If anything goes wrong with them or you can't get the globe out because they're recessed and impossible to get hold of, you either need to remove the entire housing or call an electrician.

Mounted down lights may be fine if done properly but recessed ones are a terrible pain in the arse.


Inappropriately-Designed Toilet Windows

I flat out refuse to look for a photo for this one but the example I give you should draw a clear enough picture.

At a brand new house designed by architects wanting to stretch their options, the tiniest room was designed with a big old window that reached all the way from ceiling to about hip high.

You know, exactly the right shape and size to show the entirety of whoever was on the toilet to whoever was looking in the window.

And this being a new house in a shake and bake community, the people next door were so close that their windows were oriented to look at your toilet.

So the only way you could have any privacy was to have the horizontal blinds closed at all times.

This meant that if you had the window open for fresh air, you would be slapped in the leg and other body parts by a horizontal blind being battered about by the wind.

It also meant that you needed to use the light switch during the middle of the day because horizontal blinds don't allow you to leave a section at the top open to let in natural light.

Idiots.


Laundry Nook


Nope.

Yes, I know we don't spend anywhere near the amount of time we used to have to on doing laundry and we don't need anywhere near the paraphernalia or the space but I reject laundry nooks.

They seem to imply that laundry is something that should be hidden, denied and ignored, as if the clothes and sheets and whatnot just miraculously clean themselves and that implying otherwise is distasteful.

Either that or is just says 'we can't be bothered devoting a room to cleaning activities and supplies because we're designing houses poorly and need the room for something else because we're trying to shoe-horn a living space onto a postage stamp with no garden'.

I want a room with a decent sized counter, a couple of deep sinks and a decent amount of storage space for cleaning items and linens.

I want somewhere to leave my sheets and towels and clothes if I can't or don't feel like washing them straight away. Somewhere they'll fit without having to be crammed out of the way.

I also want somewhere I can clean other household items that might need cleaning.

You know, things like shoes with dog poop on the soles which I strangely don't want to wash in the bathtub I bathe in, the shower I stand in or any of the sinks I wash my hands, face, food or crockery and utensils in.

Laundries are useful and versatile dammit.


There's probably a few other things but that's more than enough ranting to get on with for now.

More than enough.



*Oh the horror!

**Americans etc, you say 'sink stopper', Australians say 'plug'. This is because it can be used to plug up the drains of both sinks AND baths and saying you need a sink stopper for your bath confuses us.