It's not about the house.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg

Okay now finally it’s time for me to write about the shower. Again.

If you remember – which there’s no reason you should because I’ve changed the subject like twelve times since I mentioned it, but – this is the shower in my bathroom. And when I say “my bathroom,” I mean the master bathroom which, except in an emergency, I am the only one to use. As opposed to when I say “the bathroom,” by which I mean the public one that's sometimes also known as “Johnny’s.”

Got it?

In other words, this time, I’m talking about my super-duper, en suite, pod-bay shower:

Which never got caulked up completely when it was installed and I didn’t know that when I started using it and Johnny (let’s be honest) didn’t have the sack to tell me. So the water was getting in the cracks between the pieces, and therefore in the wall behind the pieces, making all this yucky mildew slime that would come oozing out the creepy cracks when I was in the shower.

Yum.

So I stopped using it for a week or so. To let the nasty thing dry out a bit. Then Johnny, as he says, “bleached the piss out of it.” And I would like to state for the record that there wasn’t any piss in it. Not when he bleached it, anyway. I’m not going to swear I’ve never.

Oh come on, are you seriously going to claim you’ve never?

Fine.

Neither have I.

Ahem.

Moving on.

Apparently, however, I was wrong to disparage Johnny’s gonadal dimensions. Because when he finished this chlorinated task – and I don’t know the details of how he got Chlorox in all the cracks, but get it there he did – he had the sterile balls to come out and say to me: “You know, Love, you also have to clean the shower sometimes.”

Ahem.

Moving on.

No, you know what? Not moving on. I have to say in my defense, that this bleach job had been imminent for weeks before it happened, and I saw no sense in scrubbing the shower before he climbed all in it with his boots on. Plus he was going to be spraying bleach all over! Why not see what that takes off before I get on my hands and knees?

It’s also true that we were caught in a sort of catch-22. I say “sort of” catch-22 because it’s not really a catch-22, and I hate when people use that phrase for things that just don’t qualify at all. Like, I heard somebody say “I’m hungry but – catch-22 – if I eat now I won’t be hungry at dinnertime.” No, not catch-22 (also not a concept I can understand, by the way: ruining dinner). A catch-22 would be if you don’t eat now you won’t get dinner later. See?

Anyway, we were caught in a sort of conundrum whereby he needed me to stop using my shower for a few days before he’d bleach it, but I needed to know for sure he would bleach it before I’d stop. And since I couldn’t be sure he would until he did, and since he couldn’t do it till I stopped, we sort of circled the wagons round each other for a couple weeks. Hence the soap scum about which Johnny’s sack so prissily complained.

And then the shower broke. So that solved that problem.

The stupid hand-held nozzle for which I never installed the hanger-thing because I didn’t want to put a screw-hole in the wall and risk getting shower-water in there (you decide whether that’s irony or not: no way I’m going there). It had been hanging headfirst by its hose this whole time, occasionally getting dropped and banged around, and this time when I went to turn the jet-adjuster thingy (and I don’t remember why I went to turn the jet-adjuster thingy, but it had nothing to do with Dirty Boy, I swear) it just came off in my hand.

Lookit:

So I started using Johnny’s shower and Johnny, eventually, bleached mine. That, I believe, was this past Tuesday. I’m going to see if I can get him to caulk it up for me today while I spend nine and a half frustrating hours blow-drying plastic wrap onto all the old windows that need replacing.

Then I’ll go buy me a new shower nozzle for my bathroom, and some black curtain rings for Johnny’s. And he wants a black switchplate, too, if I can find one. And bathmat. So it will be full-on, come-up-and-see-me-sometime, bordello décor.

Hey, he's the one who's going to be pissing in there. If he’s got the sack for it, why not?


Anybody out there? Want to explain the title to me for a POEM CONTEST? Don't just google and define it, tell me what stupid pun I'm making...

18 comments:

Muskego Jeff said...

I'm happy to say that I'm probably the only one who reads this that actually knew what Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
meant without resorting to Google. I can even pronounce it (after 2-3 tries).

I'll take a stab at your pun - you and Johnny have your own "sides" (showers) and you should each stick to your own side. Or something like that.

Does he know that you talk about his coinpurse in your posts like this?

Anonymous said...

I REALLY hope its not because you have fish in your shower!
Maybe because your shower is a "meeting place?" You dirty girl you!
:)

EGE said...

MJ -- Ah, grasshopper, but did you spell it without cutting and pasting? HOW did you know that without googling? Where are you originally from?

You're close, and you get partial credit, but I'm going to leave it open for a little while to see if anyone gets the actual pun.

Hint: It rhymes with the original. And for those of you who aren't secret Massholes at heart, you CAN find the original by googling...

Play on!

EGE said...

PS Charlie -- I am. But nope!

EGE said...

Oh, and PPS -- Yes, Johnny knows.

Or he will, as soon as I sack up and tell him.

Gary said...

"chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagung"

Isn't that the sound a hippopotamus makes when it farts underwater?

Charlie said...

Hey!
That hint is so NOT helpful...especially to those of us who are not Massholes and have no freekin' clue how you pronounce that "word."
Rhymes with....I'll give you rhymes with....we'll see how well you rhyme with a fat lip....and a mashed head....
lucky she's on the other side of the country.....
mutter mutter *)&&^#@%
:0)

Anonymous said...

Trust me even Massholes cannot pronounce it and even folks who live right in it cannot pronounce it so they have a different name they refer to it as.

Anonymous said...

Aha! Rhymes with agog (thanks wiki and the lake webster singers - that sure is one catchy theme song)....
now, what rymes with agog...
bog, clog, dog, fog, grog, hog, jog, log, slog, tog....
I know!
You and Johnny must (each) SLOG like a DOG working up a sweat like a HOG, while wearing a CLOG, to keep the FOG from returning the room to a BOG and FROG haven when you would rather being laying about like a LOG, in your swim TOG, and drinking a GROG!
who's the poet now?
(sorry jog did not fit)

EGE said...

Me, I'm sorry! Hippopotamus farts are NOT funny!

Yes they are. Hee hee. Hippo farts.

I didn't mean it rhymes with Chargoggagogg. I meant if you find the phrase translation of Chargogga, then I am making a stupid rhyming pun within the PHRASE.

Sheesh. I bet James Joyce never had to explain himself this many times. Then again, nobody still knows what the hell HE was talking about.

Anyway. I'm going to write a new post now, and if nobody gets the answer to this before I put it up, then we'll call Muskego Jeff the winner.

And Gary gets points for Hippo farts.

And Charlie gets NO points for threatening fat lips!

Muskego Jeff said...

I couldn't spell it right without cutting & pasting if my life depended on it.

I'm from the Milwaukee area, all my life. Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg was the answer on a local radio show a number of years back. It took months for anybody to get the answer correct (this was just before teh internets became so popular). It's such a funked up word that I can't help but remember it.

Anonymous said...

Ha, that's easy to pronounce...Webster Lake!
You fish on your side, I fish on my side and nobody fishes in the middle. (and no, I didn't google it!). So you and Johnny have been circling the wagons, each doing his own thing, and you haven't actually met in the middle to discuss it?

Anonymous said...

BTW, has that facecloth been lying on the floot outside the pod shower all this time, or is that a repost of the original picture?

Anonymous said...

Ooops, that should be floor!

EGE said...

Ooh, Ladyscot, I was busy writing my poem when you posted this!

That's a re-post of the original picture. Johnny emptied the bathroom when he bleached the shower.

Which he still hasn't caulked yet, by the way.

Anonymous said...

The best part about Webster Lake Is Waterfront Mary's a watering hole in which you sit on toilets at the bar! (non functioning)

Anonymous said...

EGE, you will know, what is the plural of orifice? I'm arguing with a colleague.

EGE said...

The plural of orifice is "assholes."