More Stuff Stolen from David's Blog

Part 2 in my ongoing series of original blog ideas I stole from David.

OK so David's most recent post is something about do-it-yourself home projects. I had a small home project of my own last week, but quite unexpectedly. When I turned my shower to "OFF" in the morning, the water became very cold but did not in fact go away as it normally does. This was alarming because, in order to minimize the amount of water dripping on my bathroom floor, I am a person who towels off while still in the shower. Let me emphasize again that this water was very cold. Like the water they put in pictures on the labels of vodka bottles. After doing a short interpretive dance to memorialize my feelings about my now frigid shower, I turned the water back to warm and wondered what I should do next. Being in a warm shower is quite nice first thing in the morning. But when you are ready to get on with the rest of your day, having a steady downpour of water can become something of a nuisance. It makes it impossible to do anything with your hair. This is why people do not generally like to go walking in the rain (except in movies, where people routinely do insane things, like dating Meg Ryan).

I fiddled with the shower knob repeatedly, but to no avail. The water was more than willing to become ice-cold, but it would not turn off. I tried pushing down on the knob, pulling out on the knob, and everything in-between. I tried using a loofah as a tool. This idea was exceedingly misguided, but I was desperate. I finally was able to get the water to turn off, but the knob by now was pointed straight up, as though in supplication. Its normal "OFF" position is all the way to the right. This struck me as a less-than-favorable outcome.

After exiting my water trap of a shower, I decided to look up home shower repair on the Home Depot web site. The site assured me that replacing a show knob is exceedingly easy. Any person can complete this procedure. People do it all the time. Sometimes they even allow their children to help, building lifelong memories along the way. This was followed by a series of instructions and schematics that convinced me, utterly and completely, that this was outside of my abilities. I called a plumber and went to work.