The Talking Shower!

Staying in other people's homes is an experience that brings mixed feelings.  When you are shown to the strange bedroom, you have to take a while to orient yourself.  Everything is in a different place, the bed feels different.  Maybe there isn't a lamp next to the bed, or maybe it's on the side you don't normally sleep!  Maybe the room doesn't have it's own bathroom and YOU HAVE TO SHARE!! All these things are uncomfortable and strange.  It takes a while to get used to everything (and by the time you are, you usually have to go home :)

This past week, I tended some friends' 3 youngest children while mom, dad and graduating senior daughter took a trip to Europe.  I looked forward with some trepidation because in spite of having 3 sons of my own, they are practically "only" children, each being 6 years apart from the other.  So having 3 kids - 14, 11, and 8 together, was going to be a challenge.  It wasn't.  They were delightful - well-behaved, helpful and fun.

That was not the problem.  The problem was the "talking shower!!"  The parents said I could sleep in their lovely upstairs bedroom.  When I went upstairs for the first time, I was delighted to see it was a large airy room with a ceiling fan.   The only thing that freaked me out a little was that there was a LARGE shower/bath in the corner of the room.  Yes, that's right, folks, not in it's own room, but in the CORNER OF THE BEDROOM!!!  Oh, dear, showering in a room that had no door to lock.  And it had sheer glass doors.
Well, never mind, I told myself, you can lock the door to the bedroom.  Oh, wait, no door to the bedroom.  OK, JUST BREATHE!!!  I went down the stairs and found a door at the bottom of the stairs.  PHEW, OK, I can lock that!

Monday morning arrived.  Now, if you are a girl reading this, you know what a big deal hair is to us, right?  Doing my hair takes an hour every day (maybe it's because I am 55 and can't just run a comb through and go out - IT WOULD SCARE THE NATIVES!!! )  So I wash my hair Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.  This was Monday.  This meant that normally I would not shower, but take a bath so as to not mess up the hair.  I went over to this VERY LARGE shower/bath and looked at it.  I turned the handle of the tap and water came out the top of the shower.  I looked around for the knob to change from shower to bath water.  Nothing.

Ah, on the the wall I spied a keyboard.  Yes, that's right, a keyboard in the bath.  All sorts of little signs. Ok, I can do this.  I undressed and got into the shower.  That itself was difficult  because the wall of the shower was HIGH, and I have short legs.  This was not going well.  I shut the doors.  I looked at the keyboard again.  Wait, I can't see anything because I am blind without my glasses.  Open the door again and get my glasses.  Push the button with what looks like a shower on it.  A Chinese woman welcomes me to the shower!!!!!!!!!Water pours down from the top.  Urggh, I didn't want that.  I don't want to get my hair wet.  Steam begins to fill up the shower.  Now I can't see out of my glasses.  Open the door, wipe off the glasses.  Close the door, push another button.  Water shoots out of the lower jet holes, tiny jets of water that STING!! I hop to the side.  Glasses fogged up again.  Open doors, water sprays from the sides out onto the floor. Manage to grab a face towel.  Wipe the glasses off. Try again.  No luck.   Finally, I pushed all the buttons.  Now I have Chinese women talking to me, water gushing from all sides, a hot blast of steam on my legs.  I have visions of dying in the shower, a large beached lady, shot with water jets, drowned in steam and heat and soapy water.  Yeah, I wanna be that EMT.  Well, thank goodness, I would be dead and wouldn't have to see me being lifted out of this torture chamber.  (Although I would probably be there in spirit, floating above, with my late husband David, with him saying "Sha, you put on a little weight, I see.")
Hmm, so not going to happen.  I WILL FIGURE THIS **** shower out!!

OK, so I decide to wash my hair.  Because it's already wet.  But there is no water coming out of the top shower.  So I have to kneel down in a rapidly filling tub, bend my head and rinse off my hair with the needle point sniper bullets of water shooting out the side.  Powerful, painful massage. 

Finally, I grab my sponge.  I think there is a water softener in this house, because the sponge will not get rid of all the soap.  I try to rinse it in one of the jets.  The temperature keeps rising.  (One of the buttons I pressed, I think, must raise the water temp).  Now, I am not only going to be a large beached lady, but I will be a large, BOILED, beached lady.

Once my hair is rinsed (oh, my painful scalp) and I have allowed water to reach each pressure point on my body, I decide to stop showering.  I close the tap.  But the shower continues to heat up, because I apparently pushed the sauna button.  Finally, in desperation I push the OFF button.  Goodbye, says the Chinese lady.  I open the doors and swing my short, fat leg over the side, missing the step and falling on my red, hot, (and I don't mean that in the J-Lo way) bottom on the floor of the bathroom. 

Well, if only I could have video taped that.  I KNOW I would have won the $10,000 on America's  Funniest Home Videos.

Staying over in other people's homes is so much fun, isn't it?