kitchen showers

My rent went up by a substantial amount this past year. The reason, I was told, was for brand new elevators, brand new windows, and a brand new parking lot. The ‘old’ elevators had wrapped in green shag carpeting that covered the floor and walls. The renovated ‘new’ elevators had been stripped of this carpeting and had been installed with an annoying automated voice that tells you what floor you've stopped on.

The ‘new’ windows required all of my furniture to be cozily crammed into the middle of my living room. And while this meant that I could reach out my hand and change the television channel from where I sat on the couch, I would do so with the coffee table resting on top of me.

And the ‘new’ freshly paved parking lot meant that nobody was allowed to actually park in the parking lot for the week that it was being freshly paved. Everyone had to park in a nearby shopping plaza, but got a good deal of exercise from the mini-hike that had to be undertaken each day to reach their car.

Yet I weathered these inconveniences with grace. How could I fault a management company that so obviously cared about my comfort and well being? And I continued to tell myself this, even as I trudged up the stairwell with shampoo dripping into my eyes when the fire alarm went off last week because of faulty wiring in the ‘new’ elevators. But now I’m beginning to think that I might be mistaken.

This morning, like every other morning, I dragged myself into the bathroom in the hopes that a hot shower would wake me up. But unless there happens to be a cup of coffee waiting in the shower for me – which there never is – these showers don’t do much in terms of waking me up. They do, however, tend to help the overall quality of the air that surrounds me, thus I continue to shower each day.

As I turned the faucet on, expecting a gush of water, I was instead greeted with nothing. No stream, trickle, or single drip. And suddenly, I was wide awake.

To maximize my sleep intake, I have my schedule timed down to the exact second. Thus, any unforeseen delay is going to make me late for work. And no water certainly qualified as one such delay. The thought of simply going back to bed for an extra half hour briefly crossed my mind, but rolling into work unbathed and with my hair sticking up at odd and unnatural angles caused me to rethink this plan. So instead, I called the apartment manager.

After relating my story of a waterless morning, the manager told me, ‘yeah, I just had some guy on the seventh floor call about the same thing. We’ll get someone up there in about an hour to take a look at it. Check the kitchen though, ‘cause the other guy said that he had running water in there.’

Being that I now had to be at work in less than an hour, having water in an hour wasn’t going to be of much use to me. So I tried the kitchen sink and, sure enough, there was water. Out of desperation, I decided on drastic measures…the result of which is simply one reason that I’m glad I no longer have roommates. Because had anyone seen me standing naked in my kitchen, head stuck in the sink rinsing shampoo from my hair with one hand while attempting lather my armpits with the other, I would have been forced to move out due to sheer embarrassment.

But since I live alone, I simply wiped up the soap-sudsy drips that had accumulated on the tile floor, shaved over the garbage disposal, and headed out the front door.

Apparently, the raise in rent for the parking lot, elevators, and windows didn’t include 24 hour water service. So obviously, my rent will be going up again next year.