Sep. 14: September showers bring tears

A few years ago I bought one of those sunflower-like shower heads. You know the ones; they’re supposed to feel like rainwater falling above you and make you forget all the bad things in life. I thought I’d give it a try because I like to spend my money on stupid stuff.

But surprise! This new shower head was immediately my favorite thing ever to show up in my bathroom. I almost wrote about it in our Christmas letter that year, because OH, THE HAPPINESS IT BROUGHT TO MY MORNINGS. It was gentle and quiet, and yet, morning after morning, there was somehow plenty of pressure in which to rinse the shampoo from my hair. Gravity can be awesome, I tell ya. They say the water falls from this shower head like rain, but it really was much, much lovelier than that. The closest comparison I can make to what it feels like is this:

(that’s rum, folks)

When the kids started choosing showers over baths, they always wanted to shower in our bathroom rather than their own. They’re messier in the bathroom than any kid ever in the history of the world, so allowing them to use our bathroom was not the best decision we ever made. Katie insisted she didn’t like the shower head in their bathroom because “it makes the water hurt.” I’ve blogged before about what a giant weenie she is with pain; I’m all WHATEVER, it’s a standard shower head:

(how can that hurt?)

And then I took a shower in the kids’ bathroom last week. You probably heard my cursing and screaming all the way to Wisconsin. The water comes out and hits the showerer (that was me) with such pain and surprise, it feels less like water coming out of the shower head and more like someone shoved a bunch of these up in there:

(the sharp ends)

That is, except for the “dead” spots—there are areas where very little water comes out at all. Those streams feel like this:

(oh yeah, it’s a cute bunny, but worthless for rinsing soap)

And then there’s the spot here and there where no water comes out at all:

It makes the simple things, like rinsing soap off one’s body, nearly impossible. If you stand in just the right place, you won’t even need a towel when you’re done. ‘Course, you’ll still stink like a mo-fo too.

We traded shower heads with the kids because we want our bathroom back and I figured if I’m reminded every morning how much their shower head sucks, I would be more likely to replace it in a timely manner. Two mornings into this experiment, I’m ready to kill every engineer at Moen or Delta or whatever company made this thing, and I’m also getting a new sunflower shower head on the way to work this morning.