So, I tried to fix our shower the other day because it was leaking. It has been leaking for about hmmmm, 8 months and I have felt extremely guilty about all the water we were wasting. Not guilty enough, apparently, to fix it though. So, it is really hard to fix because the nut and washers and stuff is recessed in the wall about 5 inches. I managed to get a socket in there to loosen the nut but I had nothing to pull it out with to replace the washer (this was at 12:30 in the morning of course, while the kiddos were sleeping) so, in all my brilliance, I decided to just tighten that nut as hard as humanly possible. I figured that would surely make it stop leaking……
Well, it stopped leaking. It also stopped the cold water from turning on at all. Even after I went back in and loosened the nut, no cold water. So, the next logical thing to do (to me) was to demo the only other functioning bathroom we had at the moment. So after demo. was complete, we realized we had only the nasty bathroom downstairs to take a shower in (it is extremely painful to take a shower when the only thing you can turn on is the hot in the upstairs bathroom). So after 2 days, naturally, that shower began to leak water all over the hall floor.
Needless to say, I was at my wits end. So, I came up with the brilliant plan of just going to Home Depot and buying a fiberglass shower surround to just plop in the downstairs bathroom so that we had 1 functioning shower. The trip was o.k. the kids were pretty good at Home Depot (for being kids). They did start to melt down a bit at the end but that was good considering we were there for 2 1/2 hours! I also got a pedestal sink and some faucets. Of course, half the stuff I needed was sold out as it always goes at Home Depot, but we did get a lot of good stuff and the shower!
So, after that, we rewarded the girls by going to the Zoo. The Garden City Zoo is really awesome. It only costs $3 for a car or truck and you can drive and park and then walk, or if the kids are fussy, you can just drive through and look at the animals. We tend to drive to the end and walk around the middle.
Of course, in the middle of the zoo, where there were no bathrooms in sight, O had to pee. Well, we were in the middle of a grassy area looking at the giraffe with no one around so she just copped a squat right there. I know that isn’t the best thing to teach her but I didn’t have a change of clothes for her and I didn’t want her to pee her pants. Should that happen in the future, I might pick a spot more out of the way and conealed though….LOL……
Anyway, so we had a marvelous day and we were on the way home. The kids were sawing zzzzz’s we had just eaten and my mom and I were having a lovely conversation when we felt a thump. A quick glance in the rearview mirrow showed a very large white box flying through the air and then skidding across the highway. I quickly turned around and then ran into the middle of the (2-lane) highway and started trying to push the box onto the shoulder as my mom pulled it.
I am sure it was hilarious. All these semi’s started stopping as well as a blue car that pulled up in front of us. My mom and I were excited because we thought someone was going to help us. After we worked on it for a few minutes and finally managed to shove it back into the back of the truck, we left (with no help from the looky-loos). Who would have thought? This box was probably 4 feet by 5 feet and really heavy. Who would have thought it would just whip out of the truck and become airborne like that?
So, after recovering our beautiful white shower that was supposed to restore the sanity, we realized that it was broken. At that point, I decided to sell the house. I thought it was a marvelous plan. We could use the money to buy a brand new trailer (no maintenance) and some land and maybe build a house later. Of course, by the time we got home, I had come back to my senses and realized the humor in it.
We were very lucky. After flying out of the truck at 70 miles per hour, there is only a small corner that cracked off. Luckily, my dad works on fiberglass all the time (when they fix airplanes) so he can make it functional and we could just put a row of tile across the bottom to cover it up. It all turned out o.k. But, should anyone ever buy a large box full of fiberglass shower surrounds, don’t just pick up the straps and toss them out of the way, it might be a good idea to actually use them to tie the sucker down. Apparently, anything will fly out of a truck at 70 miles per hour:)
