Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Shower your love on me

I think my shower is out to kill me.

I know this sounds like one of my insane rants (and I agree it’ll probably end up being just that) but hear me out. You see, I have been living in my apartment for almost three years now and so far this apartment has been absolutely amazing. It’s in pretty good shape, right in the city centre and the rent is so low I can actually make people cry by revealing it. There’s only one bad part about the entire deal: the shower.

In Normal Showerland (a.k.a. your own bathroom) showers work in a very simple way: you turn on all the hot water and then start adding cold water until you get a temperature you like. And then you take a shower. And then you stop showering at a certain point. And then presumably you dry yourself off with a towel. But that’s really your own business. Anyway, it’s a simple procedure.

My shower, however, works a little different: for some reason the type of water that is last added to the mix (so either hot or cold) takes control of the entire mix. So, if you try to take a shower the normal way it’ll end up being cold as hell, because cold water was added last. A good temperature can be reached, but only if you start with enough cold water and then add enough hot. If you O.D. on either you have to start all over again. Unless of course you want to freeze or burn yourself. Actually, to be fair, although it may sound like a bitch, and in the beginning it was, I got used to it after a few weeks and it’s not really that big a deal now.

That is, until a couple of weeks ago. Out of nowhere hot water decided it deserved to have a bigger representation in my daily shower and now whenever I try the normal procedure the water ends up being so freakin’ hot I’d burn my skin away if I would jump under it (I say jump, I mean stumble, hey! It’s early in the morning). Seeing that I know nothing about plumbing (another guy thing lost on me I suppose, see below), in my imagination the entire problem is a political struggle between hot and cold, and hot just pulled a successful coup. But I’m willing to agree that in reality it probably has something to do with my pipes (enter own lewd joke here).

I tried to do what I always do with annoying stuff, which is complain to my mom, but she didn’t seem to get it. In general the concept of a shower that is too hot is completely foreign to her anyway. If some evil super villain (or in the same category a nurse in a retirement home) would dump her in a bath of boiling water she’d probably complain about the draught. So, I explained it again. She still looked at me like she was an American tourist and I was some inhabitant of the jungle talking to her in my own language: ´WHAT? Do you speak ENGLISH? E-N-G-L-I-S-H?´. In the end she did get it but rightfully pointed out how freaking low the rent was, which sort of killed the rant.

Sigh.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know that if I end up dead in my shower I want the shower brought to justice (or to the scrap yard, whichever will hurt the thing most).

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

my shower is lovely. just though i'd let you know. :)
P.S.: Move to England!!! Take Merel with you!!! NOW!!!

Anonymous said...

why did it post it twice? oh, and though is supposed to be thought. bloody computers

spirito said...

I'll delete the second one.

and you: move to the netherlands!

Anonymous said...

i have to share mine with three guys though. which sounds good except for the fact that two of them are pigs and don't clean unless told to (which i am usually to lazy for). but i get to still share it with one good guy!! yey!!! (sorry, not really making you feel better)

spirito said...

no, not really (well the fact I am not sharing a bathroom with two "pigs" does make me feel better... a bit). Yesterday I noticed there was weird metally green stuff on my showerhead (actual english word?)

grumble.

Anonymous said...

Finnish showers are always (well almost always) brilliant. I mean how can you guys live without a mixer? You get exactly the right temperature water and you don't have to kill yourself trying to adjust two knobs blind when your eyes are full of shampoo. I've never appreciated the sportsmanship and fun it obviously offers.

Anonymous said...

its limescale i think, apparently if you soak the head of your shower in hot water with vinegar it makes it better. Although the water cools down quite quickly, so you have to keep adding hot. (tune in tomorrow for more handy tips)

spirito said...

Jarmeister (is this your new permanent online nick?): I have a mixer in my bathroom in my parents house (but that shower has a weird showerhead that sprays all the water across the bathroom, basically making it into a bath-room (ba-da-dum-tsjing!) ).

Merel: hmmm, I could try that... thanks Martha!

Beckers said...

lmao. you guys are insane. i love reading all the posts and stuff.

PS Merel--- you aren't the one I met in amsterdam, you're a different merel, correct? the one living in the UK? I get so confused.

PS-in costa rica they don't really believe in hot water. needless to say the only place where we had hot water was in a city that was guarded by a huge volcano, Arenal. I took showers by splashing myself with cold water from the faucet. F-U-N.

(and i took offense to the american tourist comment! i spoke spanish in CR thank-you-very-much!!)

PPS Now i know why mom loves italy so much. speaking another langauage is thrilling. I had a 20 min convo with some guy that worked in a tourist store in spanish. He loved me speaking and said i did a really good job. he also asked me out . . . .

i said no.

but it could have been fun!

spirito said...

Nope Merel here is UK Merel (although she is not actually from the UK so Currently-living-in-the-UK-Merel would be more correct, but that's kinda longish, isn't it?)

So basically at the end of the trip you, ehm, smelled? Lol, not ALL American tourists are like that... but most are. (same for most Dutch tourists, but that's less of an accepted stereotype).

And good for you on the Spanish part! And was the Costa Rican guy hot?

Beckers said...

lol. you have no idea. i don't think we saw one un-attractive costa rican. that includes all the men and women!

the most gorgeous was this guy named brian. he worked at the zipline thing we did through the canopy of the rainforest. holy heck, there was noone i was happier to have catch me after careening a thousand feet through the air on a string than this man.

/sigh...

(then we ran into him at the disco later that night. P-A-R-T-Y!)

Anonymous said...

HELLO BECCA!! I am not the tall blond Merel you most probably met in Amsterdam, although i do come from Amsterdam. I am the short brunette Merel who lives in the UK, I study English Literature (not Psychology like other Merel) and ehm, i don't know what else I can say to make you less confused. I talk A LOT, and Merel is more the strong silent type. She's also saner than I am, like, A LOT. Ooh, this is fun. Let's see what else I can come up with. She is also way smarter than me, seeing as she actually remembers books she's read and films she's seen, and i can watch the same film 30 times and still discover new things and forget the plot straightaway. As you can see, this occasionally causes problems in my course when I forget plotlines of novels and make a fool out of myself at seminars. i don't think I am going to write anymore, cos I have made quite a bad impression of me. Forget everything I just said, I'm lovely!!!

spirito said...

you know... it's all true! (oh and I hired Merel (Becky: Psychology-studying-Amsterdam-living-Merel) to physically harrass my teachers! SEE! I do have some gossip)

Anonymous said...

yay!! Boris just admitted I'm lovely!! (and insane, but let's ignore that). Oh and Boris, why do you never tell me these things on msn? Cool gossip is necessary in my boring life!!! I am going to the Star Wars film tonight, yay!!! By the way, me being a short brunette sounds more interesting and cool than it really is. Imagine the daughter from abfab with straight hair, a little bit (who am i kidding? a lot) fatter but with nicer clothes, and insane and not so smart. That's me.

spirito said...

darn it! you've figured out I hang out with you because I like you and not for your money (.... pun intended)!

And, ehm, sweetie, you don't look anything like Saffie from AbFab (but if this is an invitation for me to start calling you Dahling! all the time... don't mind if I do!)

Anonymous said...

Ok. Now I am confused with all the Merels but they both/all/pick any one sound cool.
Hmm. Never been a name person. During my CO times I worked for a year in a place that had like (I think I might remember wrong the ratio) two Lailas and one Leila working in there and I had really hard time remembering who's who. That was crazy.

spirito said...

yeah that does sound tricky. I absolutely suck at names too, sometimes even people I really like (like this Finnish guy I know..... ehm..... god, it's in here somewhere....).

Anonymous said...

thank you jari, we ARE cool!! You should meet us and see how hilariously different we are.
By the way, Boris, i did not mean i LOOK like saffie, but i am kinda boring like her, although I don't think so anymore now that random people who don't know me say i'm cool. Oh and you know what? I LOVED the new star wars film, go see it. If nothing else, Hayden Christensen (?) looks VERY good in it although he has unwashed hair for most of it and turns more and more evil.
Yesterday at work a customer told me she liked the way i spelled my name. ??????? IT IS the way you spell my name!! I felt like saying: no actually, THIS IS MY NAME IS SUPPOSED TO BE SPELLED YOU STUPID COW!!! But the company is budgeting and they will probably need to fire people, so i don't think it would have been a good idea.
Anyway, of to do some revision now.
(I am starting to like all your unknown friends, Boris, they should say more nice things about me)

Anonymous said...

oops made mistake again, my little rant should have said: this is how my name IS spelled, insultinsultinsult.

spirito said...

actually he will: Jari'll be in Italy, you will be in Italy and Merel will be in Italy. Basically, things will have to get really disorganized if you three aren't in the same place at least once. (though it is a big house).

and Hayden something looked nice in an interview I saw with him but the movie parts I saw, well, not so much. do like the ad that goes "Lord Vader - yes master? - Riiiiise", if you ask me, that should just be the movie.

lol, people never know how to spell my last name (which is pretty fucking easy to spell) but I always have to spell it out for people (thuh t mght b my prncition)

Anonymous said...

heehee, whenever i order a taxi or make a reservation for something I started giving gary's name (thurgood) cos i thought it would be less confusing, but people dont know how to spell that, either. People are so silly. My boss at work doesn't even knwo how to spell my last name