August Showers Bring Great Glowers

It all depends on your perspective.

After a flight to New Zealand, whereon I ceased to exist for the span of one day (and why does that always happen on Saturday?), got pelted by a Thor-grade thunder storm, took a 2:00am detour to Fiji, and finally landed in Auckland exhausted, starving, and brimming with excitement for the adventures ahead, all I really wanted out of life was a shower. ... and maybe a kiwi. ... the fruit, not the other kind. ... I mean seriously, who would land after such a traumatic plane ride and want to snuggle up to ... a rare, flightless, soda straw beaked bird? ... and not the other, other kind either.

(It just now occurs to me that you have to understand New Zealand slang to think that joke was at all funny. Sorry.)

After our brief NewZea orientation (wherein the kiwi joke was explained to us [if you're really curious I can attach a power point presentation outlining the nuance of meanings, which infuses humor into all previous phraseology]), we went to the Marae. If you've never experienced a Maori greeting and welcome onto the Marae, it is beautiful, moving, haunting, and warm, a curious juxtaposition of forgotten worlds and those to come (except with sloppier sneakers, because I swear, it NEVER stops raining in New Zealand). My need for a shower was lost in feelings of awe and honor, family and community, fear and food. However, once we had been through the welcome ceremony, a huge meal, singing and dancing together, and a philosophical lesson from the story-teller, my shower craving had returned. A short-circuit in my brain was processing all information in a binary of 'shower' / 'bed.' (For example, when asked my name it would come out: -shower-shower-bed-shower-bed-bed-bed-shower.)

So for the first time in three days (well, four according to the calendar, but that pesky oblivion doesn't count), shampoo and razor in hand I stepped into a shower. Allow me to set the scene: Outdoors, top half of a wooden crate set over a drain, dingy tile walls, 'that's a curtain?!' shower curtain, COLD water - adjust - COLDER water. And Jethro. Jethro is the wee froggy who lives under the wooden crate. And Roland. Roland is an enormous unfolding spider who lives on the shower wall... with about 50 of his buddies. I was having a Cirith Ungol, Forbidden Forest shower.

In all honesty, I found it most entertaining. It was an adventure. Abi's love adventure! Of course there were spiders in the freezing shower, that's how adventures work. How else would you know you were on an adventure if there weren't creepies in the dirty hole where you are supposed to get clean? Adventures require frogs in the shower. They serve the same function as parakeets in the coal mines. If the frog passes out, it's time to go. With all the balance of a ninja, you angle your back out of the freezing spray, and your leg crooked in front of you so you can manage to shave slice your legs with the utterly chilly razor. It was fun!

Flash forward to last night. Finally, I gave up on getting my sweet baby to go to sleep. After a very hard week, I peeled off my clothes, swept back the 'that's what a curtain is supposed to look like' shower curtain, and stared into the eyes of a very broken faucet. So here's a sentence I hope none of you ever have to write: my dog ate my shower. He jumped in and either smacked or bit the water gusher part and broke off the little bits that make it shoot from the top. (That is my advanced plumbing vocabulary coming into play. Sorry, if I left any of you behind with my elevated, PVC diction.)

Justin was doing homework. I think at this point, that should be a given. Despondently, I gathered my shampoo and razor (and a few other necessities), wrapped a towel around me and trudged downstairs to use the other shower. Allow me to set the scene: Indoors, clean white, 'you can't see me' door, COLD water - adjust - COLDER water - adjust oppositely - warm water, and only a few unsightly insect corpses. All in all, from a neutral perspective, better.

But it wasn't better. It was all worsely all over. It was one of the more wrathful showers I can recall in my brief history. I seethed at the small space, cursed that I had to use all my ballet training to shave my legs, and grumped at the innocent deadlings swirling down the drain. When it was all over I swung the door open. BAD IDEA. BRRRR COLD! I snatched my towel from the floor. Oh, did I mention the shower kind of leaks? How silly of me to leave that glorious detail out! So my towel was wet and probably about 32.5 degrees Fahrenheit. And so without a stitch of clothing on, hair dripping wet, and eyes blazing red I stormed away, leaving the offending shower to sulk in its steaminess.

It's all about context. I will endure most anything in the name of adventure. I will endure it with the joy encouraged in New Testament letters. Sans adventure, there is very little I will tolerate.