life is difficult.

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I’m going to change my shower curtain rod.  An innocent, innocuous task.

“Why do you need to change your shower curtain rod?”

Because the bubble pattern on my shower curtain rod doesn’t match the flowers on the shower curtain.

“No one notices things like that.”

I notice things like that.

“Then change it.”

But that means I’m going to have to get out of the house, drive to the store, where they’ll probably be out of shower curtain rods.

“Surely they won’t be out of shower curtain rods.”

They’re always out of shower curtain rods.

“How often do you check for shower curtain rods whenever you’re grocery shopping? How do you know they’ll be out of shower curtain rods?”

I just know.

“That’s ridiculous.”

No, it’s how life works.

“Not normal peoples’ lives.”

Maybe we have one around the house.

“You’re kidding, right?”

No. Maybe we have one around the house.

“Jessica. You believe that Wal-Mart, the place where you can buy four different kinds of grapes twenty-four hours a day, will somehow be out of their seven thousand unit inventory of shower curtain rods… but you’ll find one in your house?”

Yes.

“Taking one from another shower in your house doesn’t count as “finding one”, Jessica.  Your sister’s going to be pretty aggravated if you just dump her shower curtain on the floor because you didn’t want to have a shower curtain rod with bubbles on it.”

I’m not going to take one from another shower.  I think I saw one around here the other day.

“You’re nuts.”

I’m going to go find that curtain rod.

“I’m going to go study.”

You should at least stay on the line so I can gloat about being right.

“Fine. Go hunt.”

Hah!

“What?”

I told you we had one.

“Are you serious?”

Dead so.

“Where did you find this shower curtain rod?”

In the downstairs guest bathroom.

“Well, congratulations.”

Thank you.

“I’m going to go study now. Please don’t kill yourself trying to put it up.”

Nick, it’s a shower curtain rod.  It’s not shelf hanging.

“You just worry me.”

I will be fine.

I get the bubble printed shower curtain rod out of its suspended mode easily.  Everything clatters to the floor, flower curtain and all.

The new color-block curtain I’ve chosen is laying neatly on the floor, with its coordinating hooks sitting beside it, waiting to be installed.

Unwrap the… unwrap th… unwrap… Why the heck won’t this stupid plastic wrapping come off?

Oh, it comes off.  In a million little pieces.  This is stupid.

Why would  you wrap something this way? Each piece of the hardened cellophane wrapper takes a year and a half to unglue itself from the shower curtain rod, and each piece static clings to your body as you furiously try to shake it from your hand, leaving you covered in static clingy hardened cellophane pieces…

It’s unwrapped.

Shower curtain rods are simple to install.  Twist one way, it gets longer.  Twist the opposite way, it gets shorter.  Twist both ends of the shower curtain rod in opposing ways, and it tightens and stays where it’s supposed to.  The difficult part is balancing the pole that’s almost as big as I am over my head while standing on a three-inch wide surface, trying to get it to suspend itself in between the walls of my shower.

This is when I fall.

Foot slips, head hits back of shower, pole comes crashing down on top of me.  Darn it.

I get back up on the three-inch wide surface, and here we go again.  I get the shower curtain rod at the perfect height, evenly distributing its weight, and I go to reach for the little metal color-block coordinating hooks and curtain when the shower curtain rod falls again, hitting me on the head.  I fall off the three-inch wide surface, step on the little metal things, scream in pain, fall, hit head.

I quit.

It’s a good thing I got a tetanus booster shot for the last sharp metallic thing I stepped on, otherwise I’d be racing to the doctor right now.

The third attempt was a success, for now.  I’m just praying I twisted the stupid thing the right way this time so it doesn’t spontaneously knock me unconscious when I try to hang the new curtain.

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Tags: humor, shower curtain rod, tetanus shot