It’s been so long. If anyone is left out there, I’m glad you’re still reading. Why you are is an entirely different matter, but that you are is appreciated, in an anonymous, imaginary way.
The second or third day after I had moved into my present apartment, towards the end of September, I pulled on the stopper in my bathtub that forces the water to shoot out of the showerhead, and it came undone. Immediately I thought it snapped off, meaning no showers, forever and ever. Instead, I came to realize that it had simply come unscrewed, so I took the two metal pieces, the one plastic piece, and the one rubber washer, and put it all back together. The water pressure was dismal, but I expected that from a shower that I have to turn on hot full blast for about five minutes before I’m guaranteed a warm shower. As time went on, the shower showed less and less power with ever tug of that little faucet stopper. I would press the piece further into the faucet in hopes of causing the pressure to increase. It did, of course, until I pulled my hand out and resumed my shower.
In recent weeks, I found myself up against the deteriorating situation with renewed vigor. Without my help, the shower head with drip a stream that would make a peeing hamster feel impotent, so I took action. Not the most rational action, but the action of a man not very sure of his Mr. Fix-itness abilities in the least. I started with sticky tack, or ticky tack, or whatever it is that you call the stuff that colleges require you to put on the walls to hang posters and other cool things when you can’t use nails. I took a glob of baby-blue ticky-tack and jammed it into the faucet nozzle until I thought something might be fixed. I stepped into the shower and didn’t notice for thirty seconds that the shower pressure was slowly decreasing. But it was. So I guess, I did notice, just not right away.
My showers, for a week, went something like this: Turn on the water, all the way as warm as possible, and do other things for five minutes. Check water temperature and then assist the ticky-tack by jamming my fingers into the nozzle until some water is coming out of the shower head. Step in shower, and throughout shower, fix lessening water pressure with jamming fingers method. The only addition to this routine was when it occurred to me that I needed something hard in the nozzle to keep the stopper from moving, thus I jammed approximately 8-12 cents into the ticky-tack fixture. This was a stop-gap measure during last week. And it stopped working on Friday. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I pushed into that water-spraying faucet complete with pennies and blue goo, my 6:15 a.m. shower was not going to happen. Water drizzled from the shower head, and that was when my strength was concentrated in holding the pennies and ticky-tack in place. My fixing turned to wrecking, it seemed.
Depressed and smelly, that Friday morning, I thought how I needed a new plan. That was after catastrophizing my brain full of bathroom renovating possibilities and the assumed anger of my landlord for this trouble. I started removing all the stuff I had in that faucet nozzle. Ten minutes later it was relatively clean. Ready for some professional help, or at least, outside help. But I wanted to try one last thing: The rubber stopper in the plastic piece… I had always wondered if I put it back inside out. It didn’t seem like the worst idea to try. I was out of other ideas. I wasn’t going to shower that morning. So, I pulled it out, flipped it around, and put the pieces back together. I’m sure you’re following the tone closely enough to know that the shower worked.
But let me warn you, it worked… too good. The stopper worked so well, that I watched (no joking or exaggerating) the building water pressure begin to pull the metal faucet from the plastic shower wall, held on only by stretching glue of some sort. And, the shower now makes a screaming sound, not unknown to showers, that makes me think it is a premonition to the torpedo aspirations of the faucet piece, with my legs as valuable enemy targets. The stretchy-glue has held, so far, but I am not without fear. I have a bad leg already… and my good luck (if you can call one simple solution almost four simple months too late) cannot be all good luck, can it?
I wish I could tell you other stories, but that one is good enough for now. Maybe I’ll have some time soon enough to tell you other ones. And maybe not. Hello 2010. Thanks for the “normal” showers. And my pending wedding.