SHOWER OF POWER

So Julie and I moved into our house this week, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. Technically, that’s not really true. Let’s say we discovered the attic was stuffed with 100 dollar bills… that would thrill us more. But the fact remains that we are substantially thrilled to be in our house.

Part of this has to do with the apartment we moved from, which smelled of stale cigarettes and flatulence. It was also across the street from a sawmill and we awoke every morning to a light dusting of sawdust on our cars. And it was in a neighborhood frequented by meth-heads. And there wasn’t enough parking and you’d have to circle the block for an hour looking for a space if you came home after 8 PM. And the carpet looked like someone puked on it. We didn’t like the apartment.

But we’re not in that apartment anymore, we’re in our house, and we’re still taking it all in. There is a big bay window in the front affording us views of the hills to the east of Medford. There is a large covered patio in the back with a barbecue grill. But I have stumbled upon my favorite feature today. It’s in the bathroom. It’s a showerhead. A very naughty showerhead.

Now I’m a very environmentally conscious kind of guy (well… as much as I can be and still be an American). I recycle, I won’t drive an SUV, and I’m very concerned about the polar ice caps melting—although I haven’t a clue what to do about it. My point is, I’m earth friendly. I’m all about the earth and all of its earthen earthiness. Yes I do love that earth.

But I do have one weakness. I like a real showerhead, not these wussy low-flow pieces of crap they install in homes today. For those of you who live in homes built before 1991, low-flow showerheads are essentially misting systems like the ones you can find in the produce section of a grocery store or on the sidewalks of swankier Phoenix shopping districts. But there’s a big difference. The produce gets several misting heads, but you only get one.

I can’t tell you how many hours of my life I have wasted standing naked under a thin mist of water, hoping against hope that it would rinse something (usually soap) off me. But it never happens. You could get more water pressure from squirting a bottle on Windex on yourself. This is the price one must pay to live in a place like California. But we don’t live in California, we live in Oregon, which is also a very environmentally conscious place.

This morning I turned on the water in our shower and was almost pinned to the back wall by the water pressure. It was a wonderful thing. I’ve got some very thick hair on my head (I’m in my mid 30s, so I brag about this fact as much as possible) and this showerhead actually got it wet… all the way through! And then it got the shampoo out of that thick luxurious mass (as much as possible) in a matter of seconds.

Of course, there must be a price to pay for all this. A 12 minute shower at our house likely uses about the same amount of water a farmer would use to irrigate a 50 acre field for a week. So it’s wrong to have this showerhead, I know it. But how can something so wrong feel so right?

These are questions I just can’t answer right now. I need to go to the doctor to see why my toes and fingers look like prunes.