07 January 2011

Belt-powered shower systems

I'd lost a grandmother that used to raise lots of orphans (like Granny Wendy from Hook) and my mother was trying to find someone to help her take care of everyone, and to help clean and everything. We had interview after interview but nobody actually seemed interested/qualified.

I knew that if we didn't find the perfect person soon, I wasn't going to be able to help my mom anymore because I was getting ready to go to summer-camp for two weeks.

A woman let herself into the house and was doing all sorts of things you don't do in a stranger's house... like cleaning, and wandering around without even saying hello to us. Turns out she was one of the orphans that my grandmother had raised and she had already arranged with my father to take the job. It took forever to find her in the house... and now that I think about it, it was actually my cousin's house in real life mixed with the house I always dream about (which I'm sure will be another post someday).

When I finally found her, she was dictating the rules to everyone. Very strict rules about when you can do things around the house. It seemed like every time you did something even remotely fun, you had a chore to accompany it. I did something (I cannot remember what) and she told me that I could have 4 grams of fiber. Also that I needed to take a shower before I went to camp.

To take a shower, I knew that I needed to cut a piece of the Christmas wrapping paper. I have no idea why. So, i cut the paper into a strip about two feed wide. I walk over to where the showers are now (she moved them to under the porch and I was very concerned about spiders) and see that they are all rigged to be manually powered using wooden gears: you attached your belt around two pegs and had to pull the tail of it to get the showers to work.

That was the final straw. I had been okay with all of them changes until she took my showers from me. I started yelling about her and all the awful things she'd done, waving the wrapping paper around in the air. I remember yelling "and I don't even know how to GET 4 grams of fiber!". My mom ran over and helped me to cut down my wrapping paper into the appropriate shape/size (which was like 3 inches wide with a little triangle flag on the top), trying to talk me down, tell me she knew what she was doing, and that everything would be okay.

I was so mad at her for ruining my ability to stand in a hot shower without having to do anything. I was so upset at this woman for disrupting a our perfectly functional systems of cleaning and having fun.

I literally woke up crying and had to sort out dream from reality.

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