I usually try to alternate my tales – one week it’s Willie and Indy, the next it’s my outdoorsmen. But I’m at The Cabin and the shower and I are fighting. I need a third party who may be sympathetic.
To understand our fight, you’ll want to know a bit about our relationship. We have never been allies, the shower and I. My need for her –and she’s definitely a her – exceeds her need for me. Which is to say she doesn’t need me at all.
Although she and she alone brings me to the all-important state of Clean at The Cabin, I do not bring her to the all-important state of Clean. I leave the cleaning of the shower to my mother-in-law. I’m not proud but you must understand I have a phobia of cleaning showers that are used by people other than or in addition to me.
You know, now that I’ve said that out loud, I see how very bizarre that sounds. I should probably get that phobia checked. Treated, even. I’m not, because the end result could only be that I wind up cleaning shared showers with a devil-may-care attitude. The current me can’t live with that potential version of me.
Anyway, I don’t clean the shower. I didn’t even clean the shower that time I found a dead spider in the bottom. I ran outside and grabbed Big Don. He cleaned up the dead spider for me.
Don’t worry. I was fully dressed. That time I accidentally left my underpants in Big Don’s hat was traumatizing enough. I don’t need to run after him in a towel.
I can’t go into the story of the underpants today. That wound is still too raw.
Back to the shower. I trash-talk the shower every chance I get, and there’s plenty to complain about. I can’t shampoo my hair in the shower because it turns my hair orange. Also, the water erupts from the showerhead with a force I can only equate to Mount Vesuvius. It hurts.
Big Don is The Cabin repairman. There’s just no good way to tell your father-in-law that the showerhead hurts your delicate lady parts. Especially not after you accidentally left your underwear in his hat.
Now I feel like I have to tell you that story.
The Cabin has two bedrooms, each with one set of bunk beds. The room on the left is Big Don’s, the room on the right is my Don’s. Pete the Beagle and I sleep in Big Don’s bottom bunk since he and Tina sleep elsewhere.
The beds are not large enough that my Don and I can share, and my Don is too tall for the bottom bunk. Poor Pete is too arthritic for the top bunk.
So why not sleep in my Don’s room, with him in the top bunk, me in the bottom? Because his room is messy. I can’t sleep in messy.
No. I seriously need to get this obsessiveness checked.
The Cabin doesn’t have enough drawer space for everyone’s clothes. I just pile our stuff on top of Big Don’s dresser. And no, that doesn’t qualify as a mess. Don’t ask me why. It just doesn’t.
One time, I piled everything on top of Big Don’s dresser as we arrived, really not taking note of the baseball cap lying inverted on top. I was, however, careful to leave the hat when I packed everything at the end of our weekend.
Only I didn’t pack everything.
That was how my underpants wound up in Big Don’s hat. He thought they were Tina’s. I can’t imagine A) that conversation and B) why she still loves me.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s return to my fight with the shower. I don’t clean her. I smack-talk her. I also rate her in the Dirty category, even though she’s not. I just can’t rate her as Clean. For me to emerge Clean from the Dirty shower I wash without letting a single body part touch the shower surface. Including the soles of my feet.
I wear flip-flops.
No wonder she hates me.
This weekend, however, felt different. Big Don and Tina had installed a gleaming highboy in Big Don’s bedroom. Its ample drawers allowed storage of everyone’s clothes.
I usually have to shower with the door closed. There’s no fan, so I apply make-up through a foggy mirror.
But everyone was out. I dropped all discretion. No foggy mirror.
And the shower! Someone fixed the showerhead! No longer was I protecting dainty body parts from the porcupined water. It may be rusty, but that water flowed like a tender brook, caressing my fragile skin like red-brown silk.
You’re curious about the rusty water, right? Deer camps are not known for their luxury. The things revered in deer camp do not include four-star showers. The Cabin’s water comes from a well. That well water, high in iron sulfate, smells like a mixture of blood and rotten eggs, and is an alarming shade of brown.
Sadly, my good fortune – or what amounts to good fortune at The Cabin – began to turn as I lathered up. I realized I forgot my colloidal oatmeal. Four hot days here in Pennsylvania and I’d already broken out in a sun rash. The itch was making me crazy – crazier? – and only colloidal oatmeal relieved me.
Popping out of the shower, I nearly stepped right into a large spider dangling from the ceiling. He was level with my chin and between me and my oatmeal.
Suddenly, being alone at The Cabin wasn’t so great.
I grabbed some toilet paper and squished him, then grabbed my oatmeal. I returned to the warm, soothing hug of the sulfur-scented water. I reveled in my final rinse – as much as one can when one won’t touch a single surface.
And that’s when I saw the carpenter ant climbing on the outside of the shower curtain.
Nope. I hopped out. I couldn’t kill him – I have a phobia about picking up solid, non-shower-related items from a wet shower. So soap, for example, I can pick up. Hair I cannot even look at.
Wow. That all sounds like the craziest thing I’ve said today.
I dressed, and of course tattled to Don about the horror of the shower as soon as he and the kids returned.
I should have tattled out of earshot of the shower. Not an hour after I bathed, I returned to the bathroom. And that’s when I saw it. The dead gnat on the edge of the shower. It had to have been there while I washed. Which means I wasn’t truly Clean.
What a bitch.
Yeah. I’ll catch you guys later. I need to make some phone calls. There’s got to be a qualified professional who can help me. Somewhere.
I mean, there have to be exterminators that go to The Cabin, right?