"REEL AROUND THE SHOWER, VOLUME VI"

So, every faucet in my apartment is running, dudes are clonking around my bathroom and ohh-la-wee I sure need to pee. To kick everyone out of my bathroom would involve setting pipes, blowtorches, drywall, and tools down, and, well, since there are holes ripped into the walls and floor, throwing everyone out or even shutting the door still wouldn't offer much privacy. okay, I'm just going to keep focusing on work.

Must. Ignore. Running. Water. And not. Think. About. Peeing.

UPDATE: Couldn't bear it another moment. I just popped into the bathroom, threw everyone out, covered the hole in the floor and made attendance in my living room (far away from the holes in the wall) mandatory. Ahhh....

"REEL AROUND THE SHOWER, VOLUME V"

Announcer: Meanwhile, let's check in on our story's heroine as her shower saga continues! (Bum! Bum! Bum!)

Hi folks. So, let me bring you up to speed. My kitchen light fixture is upgraded, installed and awesome. My kitchen sink has a brand new faucet and sprayer which is also of superior quality.

The shower situation is on its was to resolution still. Today's progress is slightly hindered by a refreeze of the piping, as the daily high temperatures have yet to get much past ten degrees.

But, today, I snuck some photos for your entertainment/delight/horror! Behold!

This is the hole formerly known as my shower fixture:



(Of course, the clean-embracer in me is plenty skeeved out by the grease crap that lived below the fixture as seen in that pic.)

And, this is the back of my closet:



Yesterday, my downstairs neighbor neglected to be home or return the landlady's calls, so there was no access to her apartment and thus no access to the underbelly of my bathtub. So, I dashed out for the borrow-a-nearby-shower routine again. But, today, oh today, my hopes are quite high that by lunchtime, I might just get to use my own (fully-functional) shower.

"REEL AROUND THE SHOWER, VOLUME IV"

I spoke too soon. No luck with my own shower yet, but I did venture out and borrow a shower. It very well might have been the greatest shower of my life. I do have a new kitchen light fixture, which is very nice. The toilet water temperature has been adjusted so it doesn't have exterior condensation when the radiator runs super-high anymore. But, in the morning, my kitchen faucet will be yanked out and replaced with a new one, a hole will be sawed in the back of my closet to make a second crawl space to access the back of my shower faucet (the current crawl space in the back of my closet only grants access to the underside of the tub and the drains), my shower faucet with be replaced, as will the shower head and the tiny drain in my bathroom floor under the radiator will be opened up and blasted out, and, um, I thnk that is it. Oh, and my downstairs neighbor gets a hole sawed in her kitchen to access the underbelly of my bathub. You see, this ice ordeal, as it turns out, happened to occur at a very good time, as many plumbing-related items in my apartment needed tweaking and the ice sort of forced the issue as it seems. To, you know, put it mildly. The guys doing all of this discovery and repair were wonderful and fast but simply couldn't fit everything into one day.

Anyway, I had a shower, a really hot shower. That was my main priority. If all goes well I'll have another tomorow in my own tub. A very big thank you to all of you who have offered use of your showers in the past few days during this mess.

"REEL AROUND THE SHOWER, VOLUME III"

So, a couple of determined gentlemen are currently attacking my shower with little blowtorches, yanking the handles off, chipping ice and generally working shit out. They even decided to tighten everything up while they were at it. I am pleased. With any luck, I might just shower tonight in my own shower! What simple luxury, I so had taken for granted. Let's hope they thaw and fix everything. And, it was decided that my kitchen light fixture would be upgraded while they're here. Wow, this is turning out to be a blessing in disguise, eh? Well, I will wait and say that once everything is fixed. You never know what twists and turns things can take.

"STRETCH OUT AND WAIT"

I love post-dated blog posts. Write it up, set the date ahead and one can be sound asleep while a post pops up. I love it. And, although I rearely do this, I did last night with the "crack ain't kosher" post below. And, I was out like a light when it posted. I slept so much last night. I guess I just really needed sleep, but damn, I slept forever. Forevah.

So, let's see, I have a little free time as I wrap up my morning work, before I launch into a busy afternoon. What can I tell you with this free time? Well, my left ear and the very back of the left side of my throat still are a bit sore, which I find very weird, but ignorable.

It is zero degrees in Chicago, with a windchill of fifteen below or something.

I still have a frozen shower so I have managed to continue the pioneer bath experience nicely. I now have a space heater pointed at the wall in my bedroom the bathtub backs up against and am seeing marked improvement in the temperature of the porcelain of the tub. The drain is still not draining, but I am dumping a huge stockpot of boiling water into the tub every hour or so to at least keep the temperature up in the hopes of melting something, just a little, just enough to get some water moving. This morning, desperate to feel water running everywhere, I did dump said large stockpot full of water over myself and while it was perhaps a bit too hot, I was glad to feel moving, as opposed to still, water. I am investigating options of shower-borrowing this evening. I am a trooper and all, but I am getting a little desperate for a real shower.

In the meantime, question of the day, who would like to give me some really cracker jack advice for thawing a shower. Oh, and the hot water on my bathroom sink is all frozen up, too. To avoid repeats, here is a list of everything I've tried so far. I have:

(a) filled tub with pots of boiling water
(b) poined space heater at various points of tub, walls and tile
(c) rubbed a very hot iron over all shower tiles
(d) begged with faucet in desperation to thaw itself
(e) filled tub with hot water, lined bottom of tub with baking sheets right out of the oven the increase temperature
(f) added salt to hot water before pouring it into the tub

Really, if you have any wisdom, feel free to help a sister out.

Oh will you look at that. The temperature has moved up to one degree! The high today is going to be five. Look at that. Spring just around the corner. Whimper. Speaking of which, I need to make a reservation today to go visit my folks, who live in a considerably warmer climate.

My stack of work is getting smaller.

An eBay purchase arrived Saturday that I neglected to mention! I found a favorite book from my childhood. The Great Blueness and Other Predicaments by Arnold Lobel (1968, Harper & Row) and it made me so happy that I read it with welled-up eyes.

See, lately, I've wanted to gather books that I loved as a kid. The Great Blueness was a big favorite, as were the Dorrie, the little witch series by Patricia Coombs. I've only found two, which sit proudly on my bookshelf near the little blue typewriter.

That's all I have for now. Back to the salt mines.

"REEL AROUND THE SHOWER, VOLUME II & MIXED UP 17"

Morning, sunshines. I spoke to my landlady last night, as there was still no sign of water. She's swinging by this afternoon to give things a look, as this morning I had a dome of water pushing up through my bathtub drain. I did the teakettle-and-pots-of-boiling-water-pioneer-bath again, and although it got me nice and clean, it did little to melt the ice. Oh, and my bathroom sink only has cold water available. A plumber is coming in the morning, because, as I'm sure you can imagine, scaring up a plumber on any Sunday, much less Superbowl Sunday is just not terribly easy. Ah well. I am well-scrubbed for today. I'll be cool until tomorrow morning.

Anyway...

I wrote this great post for you last night, then lost it and was on my way out the door so I didn't get a chance to rewrite it. Then, I came in from the windchill of twenty-five below evening and was too cold and tired to do much of anything but crawl under my covers and go right to sleep.

So, let's start over. That post must not have been meant to see the light of day, anyway. So, let me again welcome you to another edition of "If It Could Only Still Be Socially Acceptable To Make A Mix Tape, This Is What I Would Put On One This Week" Saturday, only a day late. No big deal. This week, since my city, heck, my region, is so consumed with sports fever, I decided to make this week's playlist a list of songs I would want played in sporting venue twer I a pro athlete.

1. Pio Mentirosa/Afro-Cuban All-Stars
2. Rock Lobster/B52's
3. Sunday Bloody Sunday/U2
4. Sabotage/The Beastie Boys
5. ANA NG/They Might Be Giants
6. First It Giveth/Queens of The Stone Age
7. The Druken Jew/Firewater
8. Nothing Achieving/The Police**
9. Machete/Moby
10. There Goes my Gun/Pixies
11. Trip Away/Jane's Addiction
12. Heights/Matisyahu
13. Black Friday Rule/Flogging Molly
14. Amy/Elton John
15. Bigmouth Strikes Again/Morrissey

(**The Police have announced they are doing a reunion tour this summer. Be still my heart! I still have a little lapel pin that my aunt (Z"L, of blessed memory) brought me back from a Police show in the early 80s. How can I not go?)

So, I went to a wonderful Tu B'Shevat seder last night. The High Holidays are my favorite, but I must admit that I like Tu B'Shevat a lot when it's done up. It's all environmental warm-fuzzies. What's not to like?

Oh, and although I feel perfectly fine, I sound raspy today. WTF? What? Is my throat frozen too? Anyway, I have a bunch of stuff that must be done before tomorrow morning, so I'm out.

"REEL AROUND THE SHOWER"

Whimper. Sooo, it looks as if my shower pipes froze last night. I couldn't imagine why. I mean it's only 7 degrees with a low of three below zero today. Why would that make a pipe freeze? Oh. Right.

Anyway. I decided to pull hot water out of my bathroom sink and dump it into the tub and take a bath. I like baths. Baths are fine. But, then, I noticed the sink wasn't draining. So, I got under the sink and took the pipers apart, cleaned them, put them back together and voila. Perfectly fine sink. But, the shower, oy the shower. Not a drop. So, I filled every burner of my stove with large pots of water and a full teakettle, and in-between dashing from kitchen to bathroom, I filled a pot with water from my bathroom sink to dump into the tub. So, as you might have guessed. I'm blogging from my tub. I have my laptop on a little table/stool thing I keep nearby and I am in the tub. I actually made the water too hot, of course, with all of that water boiling, so I burned my toes and had to let it cool for a bit first.

But, I am happily soaking, about to scrub-a-dub and get myself squeaky clean. How funny. I, of course, have the shower water valve open, to encourage water movement in the pipes, as opposed to keeping it shut off and stagnating and thus, freezing again. And, I have the space heater blasting me in the face, in the hopes of warming the pipes beneath the tiles.

Watch, any second now, this idea of mine will actually start to work and a blast of icy water is going to shoot out and nail me square in the face. Watch!

Anyway, I'll deliver my Saturday playlist stortly. Just wanted to allow you a big laugh at my expense first. Good times, folks. Good times.