Showers

It’s been a long, and fun-filled past several days, so I somehow lost track of just how long it had been since I showered.  After Rocco leaned in, sniffed me, then said, “Yup, that’s you,” I thought perhaps I’d use a little soap today before hitting Wrigley Field.

We’re staying with my Aunt Sharon and Uncle John while we’re hanging here in Wheaton.  They are brave brave souls to host this many Lonons under one roof.  With so many bodies, I padded into the kitchen to check the availability of the facilities.

“Is anyone in the shower?” I asked.

“Use mine,” Aunt Sharon offered.  “It’s easier.”

“Is the guest shower difficult?” I asked with confusion.

“Your mother thinks so.”

Now how do you choose?  I for one was sort of intrigued to see what makes a shower difficult.  Then again, I’m not exactly on my A-Game, so I figured I’d not shoot my entire mental load for the day on the simple activity of cleansing.

Fooled me.

It was one of those flossy walk-in numbers with two shower heads.  Whoa.  I was already confused.

I got it turned on (with surprising speed) and climbed in.  The front wall was blank and the nozzles were mounted, one to a wall, on the two side walls.  When running, the two streams converged in the middle of the space in opulent watery decadence.  Yay!  Get me in there!

All was fine until I tried to lean my head back to get my hair wet.  I had turned and faced away from the blank wall – the same orientation you would use in your normal average everyday “difficult” shower.  I learned very suddenly that this was, without doubt, the wrong orientation.

Maybe it was me.  Perhaps I was overly fried from the road trip.  Perhaps we’d had one too many glasses of wine last night at dinner.  Perhaps I was suffering mild heat stroke from jogging through the neighborhood.  I’m sure the vast majority of the world’s population could successfully use this shower without major injury.

Not me.  At my height, with the way I titled my head back, it was the perfect angle for the shower streams to shoot directly into each of my ears.  My little chemo brain took a few moments to recover.  Then there was much head shaking and attempts and draining.  I stood up on my tip toes and tried again.

It was like someone threw water balloons into my ears.  I flopped back onto my heels and slid out of the path of the water.  I tried ducking a little.  Now the water wasn’t shooting in directly but was pouring in through rivers running down my head and swirling around my ear drums.

I stepped out of the water and turned to face my nemesis.  C’mon brainiac.  It can’t be this hard.  Oh the joys of sleep deprivation and chemo brain.

Oh!  I’ll rotate 90 degrees and lean back into the stream!  That’s gotta work, right?

And it totally did!  Until I started laughing at my own stupidity, opened my mouth, and nearly drowned from the blast of water the other nozzle shot into my face.

At least I don’t smell.  Yet.