We’re all going to wax Biblical if this quarantine thing doesn’t end soon. Which book? Well, we have several suitable possibilities, mostly Old Testament, such as Numbers: Six feet “social distancing”, Num 16: 20, “And the Lord said to Moses and to Aaron, ‘Separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment.’ Does that sound familiar?
Or how about Chronicles? This is all getting pretty Chronic, all right. We have not yet reached the severity of the tribulations of Job, but for some it must seem mighty close. Jeremiah asks, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?” Why indeed? And Lamentations? The name alone suffices for connection to our present situation. Pick a Psalm, any Psalm. How about Psalm 69
: 29 ? “But I am afflicted and in pain; let thy salvation, O God, set me on high.” In the New Testament, we’ll have to settle for the Revelation to John, right at the end (chapter 22), where it says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes….” Well, we’ve got the washing thing going on. Does that count?
And speaking of washing….
My showerhead decided to commit suicide on Sunday morning. Wish that it had chosen to call a hotline or some such thing first. See, I got into the shower after heating up the bathroom so that it would not be like walking through a car wash in December, adjusted the showerhead so that it would hit just the right spots and not be wasting all of that lovely warm/hot water on my toes, then flipped up the water control to where I would not be in danger of being par-boiled, and went to step into the invigorating stream. Wowza! Invigorating would not be how I would describe what happened next. The showerhead parted company with the pipe on the wall and fell –with its flexible metal hose–to the floor of the shower, doing a fine imitation of a geyser at Yellowstone. Now this was not the first time that such an affair had happened and on previous occasions I had simply shut off the water, picked the showerhead up, repositioned it in the gizmo that held it and started over again. Simple, eh? Ha, ha! Guess again, sudsy one.
This time when I turned the water on once more, the entire showerhead and the apparatus which held the water delivery system in position to be adjusted, separated from the water pipe in the wall of the shower, dropped to the shower floor and became nothing but hardware slated for disposal at the next annual Trash Pick-up. The water, meanwhile, was shooting out of the pipe, unencumbered by any sort of regulation or direction…and pretty darned cold too. I managed to shut off the water shooting halfway across the shower enclosure and look over the
situation–which did not look good. I tried doing what had worked (or seemed to) before, then realized that the problem was considerably more serious, in that a plastic whatzit that was supposed to hold the showerhead in place and allow it to be moved around for positioning was now cracked and not likely to hold anything anywhere that I wanted it. Another metal fitting intended to hold the entire water-delivery device in place was not going where it was supposed to, so everytime the water was turned on, all of the metal parts shot off, the water shot out and the bathroom threatened to look like a badly-managed aquarium. The words that came to mind were not ones of usual Sunday morning usage. The hair finally got washed in the sink (a feat of considerable contortion), the rest of the body got a sort of “lick and a promise” (Where are the cats when they can be of some help?) and everyone I saw that day in person was warned to stay upwind. Then began the search for plumbing expertise.
Bob, the Landscaper Dude, got the first call since he was there on other business but the plastic whatzit was not fixable. He jury-rigged the system to at least look like it might work, but I, not trusting a Rube Goldberg-like fix to last past the next scheduled personal cleaning attempt, headed off to Lowe’s(wearing my Covid-19 mask) for a new mechanism, after calling local plumber & handymen and finding them out (Is everybody having emergencies because of spending so much time at home, washing and flushing and such?).
I am now debating whether to wait until I can actually contact one of these worthies or to give the intrepid householder a shot at attempting this challenge myself. Could depend on the fine print in my insurance policy. My water bill is already likely to be up this month because of watering the new plants. If I don’t get a shower for a few days, everyone in town may be able to tell how all this came out when the wind shifts.
