Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

First the good news: other than still being in yet another fibromyalgia bad spell like I already was (see below), I am uninjured. Unrelatedly but included because I want to include something good, not just a could-have-been-worse: I've gotten around to editing some recent photos, so sometime soon I'll get around to posting the rest of my Snowzilla pictures (now that we're in a warm spell and nobody's thinking about the weather a few weeks ago, but oh well). And my missing brother is back in contact. So: there's good news. And I'm not freshy injured.

Anyhow, I fell in the shower, slowly but kind of spectacularly, and probably need help picking up the pieces. (I mentioned this on Facebook when it happened, but without as many details because I had entirely run out of the ability to cope with anything.)

Alongside the top paragraph(s), you should see pictures of what my tub/shower looked like until a couple nights ago (including the coolest shower curtain ever -- "The Artist Formerly Known As The Little Prince" -- which I think is undamaged but I need to look it over carefully later). When I fell ... things broke.

I've got my nifty clawfoot tub, which would be even more nifty if my water heater were able to actually fill it, but very inconveniently I am temporarily without a shower. Yuck. The thumbnails I've included link to photos of the damage.

(What happened? Well, my feet felt like they were slipping out from under me, I shifted position to get them properly under my center of mass again, I thought I had averted any misadventure, ... and then in seeming slow motion I tipped backward over the lip of the tub, dragging the shower curtain with me and ripping out all the holes at the top of the curtain-liner. This is, um, A Thing That Does Not Happen To Me ... except for the bit where it's happened to me twice in a few years. Yuck. Not sure if it's because of the fibro, the migraines, or something else entirely. Definitely not happy about it, though it's still rare enough to make denial a feasible ego-defense. (What? It still works if I know my mind is doing it. :-þ ))

Some parts look like they could be re-used, but others definitely broke and need to be replaced. I'm guessing that the particular things that broke mean my most reasonable course of action is to buy a new add-on-shower kit (a long time ago the box that this one came in was lying around, which is how I know this exists as a DIY kit). Looking at it so far, I think it's going to be an "I need another pair of hands" kind of project, but if the threads are stripped in the hole in the faucet assembly that the vertical pipe up to the showerhead screws into, then it probably turns into a "need somebody to do it for me" thing (either a more confident friend with plumbing skills, or a pro), because I don't feel secure removing & replacing that chunk.

The connectifier that attaches the curtain rod and the tie-to-the-wall rod to the upright pipe hath split in twain. I don't know whether that's from age & corrosion or if it was just made of metal that weak to begin with ... but perhaps it's just as well in either case, as the attachment points to the wall and ceiling didn't get ripped out. Anyhow, it seems like a kinda specialized piece. I'm sure I could kludge something from the proverbial baling wire and duct tape, but I find myself wanting a more solid solution in this case.

Another damaged piece is this, um, screw-nipple(?) that's on the bottom of the upright pipe and screws into the hole on top of the faucet assembly. It's not only bent, but the threads are munged and even torn (which is what makes me worry about the mating threads in the hole). It can actually be removed from the pipe, so maybe I can replace it as a single piece, but it looks like a kind of specialized part. I dunno, maybe I'm wrong -- plumbing is not my strong suit.

The showerheead and the pipe leading up to it look okay except for that screw fitting on the bottom. The tubing that makes up the curtain rod may be a little bent but can probably be pulled into shape with new fasteners (I need to look closer at the ends and see whether the broken connector comes off the tube easily or not). And the rods connecting to the wall and ceiling look okay. So it's conceivable that I can get away with just replacing two curtain-liners and a couple of parts ... if I can find them. And I have been severely spoons-deficient for the past week or so, which means not having a lot of extra energy for parts-hunting (nor time, because pain & fatigue & not feeling steady enough to drive have put me way behind schedule on other things that I Really Need To Do -- *sigh* ) so it may be more efficient to just look for a kit in any case. (Oh look, too tired to make decisions. Great. Well, I have at least one more sleep before I shop...)

If I do replace the whole thing as a kit, I think I want to see whether I can find one closer to the size of the tub. (If you look back up at the first pictures, you can see that the oval for the shower curtain is much shorter than the tub.)

When I get just a smidgen closer to being caught up on urgent-things, I need to start posting Perrine-stories, fun photos, political thoughts, and new music. I've got a bunch of ideas and first-paragraphs; I need to write things before I forget more of them than I already have. In the meantime, have some icicles from the back of my house this past weekend. :-)

A tweet from The Other Livvy (@theotherlivvy), 2016-01-30:

Boss: 'That skirt is inappropriately short for work.' Colleague: 'Don't worry, my thigh high boots are covering my knees!' - my new hero!