A Cold Shower

I had to take a cold shower today. I also had to take one yesterday. We'll see about tomorrow.

What happened is that I decided to wash out the garage. The rat droppings were getting to be a bit much, so I hosed off everything. The area around the water heater was especially bad, so it got special treatment.

It wasn't until the next day when I needed to take a shower before going to work that I noticed there was no hot water. I don't do cold showers, but there was no choice. I took an extremely fast shower while trying not to scream. My hair got rinsed, but shampooing it would have involved more time under the cold water than I could stand.

Psychologically, I couldn't deal with trying to light the pilot light. I was afraid of blowing up the house and most of all, myself. I decided to not worry about it until the next day.

Today was the next day and having had time to prepare myself, I tried to light the pilot. The directions said to hold a button while at the same time inserting a match inside the heater. I was not going to stick my fingers inside that thing, so I got a barbecue lighter with a nice long barrel.

That led to a problem because the lighter takes two hands to keep the flame going and I needed a third hand to keep on the water heater button. Luckily, I have two feet. I had to stand on one foot with my toe on the button and bend down and stick the lighter in the hole.

It would not ignite.

Defeated, I washed my hair in the yard with the hose. The water in the hose was hot from lying in the sun, so I almost finished washing my hair before the water turned cold again. I had three more hot hoses and could have gotten a decent warm hosing off with them, but not wanting to strip outside, I went inside to take a quick cold shower.

The repairman comes tomorrow. I sure hope he can fix it. If he can't, I might become so desperate that I may start bathing outside with the warm hose water. I wonder what the neighbors would think?