Spawned from a blog written by my the Coxswain of Literary Greatness, Kevin Alexander, I was moved (quite literally) to try writing in different locations to see how that would affect my writing.  Now, while our boy Kev was talking about changing his location from the East Coast to Lake Tahoe, due to financial constraints, I’ve scaled things down a bit.

While I would love to say that I did something as creatively romantic as jumping online, picking a last-minute cheapo fare, and jetted off to Colorado, Arizona, the Bahamas, or Belize, where we actually find ourselves at this specific moment is sitting on the floor of my as-yet finished shower in my bathroom.

That’s right, kids, I’ve traveled all the way from the desk in my bedroom (office?) some fifteen or so feet to the bathroom.  I wondered if being physically positioned at ground zero of a weeks-long and frustrating shower replacement would have any effect on my prose.  Follow along as we find out.

Tonight I finished doing some caulking work, finished it laughingly badly, I might add.  Tip: never “wait a few minutes” after caulking to go back and smooth down the bead.  That gooey trail of sealer you walked away from only moments ago will have suddenly become a thick-skinned bead of impenetrable whiteness.  Good luck smoothing it into an unnoticeable seam!

There are short lengths of two-by-fours in here with me, used primarily to keep the step stool I have to keep using from scarring up the floor of the shower.  This has helped, I suppose, but it looks like I’ve managed to mark up the surface with unidentifiable black marks here and there, probably due to the careless placement of random tools at one time or another.  Perhaps I should be angry about this, but at this point, I’ve been so long without my very own shower, I really could care less.  If scuff remove doesn’t take them out, there will be no tears from me.  I just want my shower back!

I’m in a slightly better mood about all of this at the moment, mainly due to the fact that it seems I’ve finally turned a major corner in this whole charade and will soon be enjoying running water, much like they did in the 30s, once again.  That is, I will if I can find a replacement for some faucet surrounds I threw out before realizing that they were specific to this apparent one-off production of a shower faucet that I have been blessed with by a previous “plumber.”

Now, sitting here and going through all this, I’m getting a little aggravated again.  You know what I’m not going to do before I go to bed, after having gotten all hot doing caulk work and roughing in the shower head?  Well, I’m NOT going to take a shower?  Why, you ask?  Well, because I don’t have on yet!

Still, may I say that it was silly of me to think that this whole operation could be completed in a couple of weekends.  For normal people this might be the case, but I have a life that is not like that of my father, a home craftsman who I still admire as if he were Joseph of Aramathea’s very own apprentice.  I’m sure dad laughed to himself a tiny bit when I outlined my plans.  He had to have known I’d not pull this off as easily or quickly as I’d thought, but he kept quiet and let me work through it myself, and that’s probably a good thing.  I’m sure I’d not have been in the mood to listen to why “that’s a rather ambitious plan.”  Instead, I got to find out myself how, when you plan on doing a “simple” replacement of one horribly crappy shower insert with another, much better one, you can’t “just pull that one out and put the other one in.”  Oh no.  See, you have to get the floor level, that can take most of an afternoon, figuring in trips to the hardware store for supplies.  Then, you have to get the walls positioned and squared.  There’s another afternoon, figuring in a trip to the hardware store for supplies.  After they’ve been roughed in, you’ll realize that you really should repaint at least the worst part of the ceiling, and then you’ll realize that you didn’t paint down far enough to meet the new lower walls of the replacement shower.  What’s that?  You say you didn’t know that they could possibly be shorter?  Well, they are, so there you go.

All this priming, painting, drying, trial-fitting, hardware-store-tripping, and whatnot is easily going to eat up two weeks, given that you don’t have four hours every night to work on it.

Let us not forget, either, that you will find out that nothing fits together the way you thought it would, that the previous “craftsman” installed plumbing in such a way as to cause more work for you when you’re trying to do it in a way that doesn’t absolutely suck ass, and that you still have to make more trips to the hardware store.

So here I sit, surrounded by tools, parts, and supplies, hoping against all odds that the plumbing shop I heard about will be open tomorrow morning so I can buy JUST ONE MORE THING and thusly be able to finish off the final, final, FINAL bits of plumbing, install the shower rod, hang the curtain, and then…hold my breath as I turn on the water and, much like Noah, pray that nothing leaks.

I hope you all enjoy the good fortune of a functioning personal bathing facility.  I envy you all.

Stay tuned for future Venue posts, when I’ll be bringing you inspired ramblings from “the coffee shop, or out in the garage in the workshop, or sitting in the pits at the drag strip.”  Should be a real gas.