I inherited many excellent traits from my mother’s side of the family: the burning desire to put pen to paper, the understanding that anytime is the right time for a cocktail party and/or afternoon tea and/or a cold drink, an instinct for selecting the best seats at the theater, and an excellent phone dialing finger with which to hire people to fix things around my house.  What is the opposite of Do-It-Yourself?  Stay-1000-Feet-Away-From-Any-Project?  That is what that finger represents.

As an example, many years ago, the little plastic thing you use to turn a bulb on and off on my grandparents’ lamp broke.  Readying their phone dialing finger, they picked up the phone with the intent to call a maintenance man – before my maintenance man, my husband, stopped them.  Kyle went to the hardware store, purchased another 29-cent little plastic thing, and replaced it in about ten seconds.  In return, my family celebrated him in the manner we felt fit the situation, which was with an immediate cocktail party and a series of enthusiastic toasts over the next several years of dinners.

As another example, my mother once put together an IKEA etagere from a kit (took her 12 minutes) and every time we visit, I show my children and proclaim, “Ta da!  Bubbe BUILT this!”

When we moved into our house, Kyle bought me a high-tech shower head from Instagram; last week, it broke.  It broke while Kyle was out of town for work, and so I texted him a picture of the broken shower head and asked if he wanted me to 1) call a plumber, 2) wait for him to get home, or 3) something else.  He immediately responded “Do not call a plumber” because he knew I already had my dialing finger poised and ready to go in that respect.

“Leave it until I get home,” he typed, referencing a date several days in the future.

The next morning, I showered in our sons’ bathroom, and then decided I would help along the fix-it by researching shower heads.  After several hours spent combing through reviews – and discovering an entire universe where people use their showers for much more than I do – I found a shower head that did everything I needed it to do, which is clean my personage in an efficient and effective manner.

And wouldn’t you know it, that exact shower head was available for purchase in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

I had taken the following day off from work due to hockey, but hockey was such that the schedule gave me a free morning to do as I please…like, you know, buy shower heads.  Which I did.  Then I got a pedicure and had twenty minutes to sit on my butt waiting for the polish to dry, so I used those twenty minutes to watch a variety of videos on how to install a shower head, which, as the videos either intimated or flat-out stated, did not seem that hard.

I went home.  I set the shower head down in the garage on Kyle’s tool bench.  I put away the dishes, checked my email, sent my stories for Monday off to North Dakota Today, and then went up to the master bathroom.  The broken shower head was hanging there, still broken.

As I learned from the videos, the first step to replacing a shower head was to remove the broken shower head.  As Kyle had installed the previous shower head, and as Kyle had a habit of putting bottle lids and other screwable things on too tight for me to remove, and as I had a pathetic amount of arm strength (which is a constant source of concern for my mother, who has told me many, many, many, many, many times to go and buy an exercise band and/or weights), I thought to myself,

“I’m probably not strong enough to remove it.”

But then I, Amanda, Watcher of YouTube Videos and Reader of Shower Head Reviews, remembered that Kyle had a wrench-type thing (I just Googled it; it was a crescent wrench) that could be attached to the shower head to give the wrencher the power she needed to unscrew the unscrewable.

I went out to the garage, got the crescent wrench, got the shower head so as to save Kyle a step by putting the shower head in the bathroom, got a step stool, went back upstairs, stood on the stool, attached the wrench to the shower head, and REMOVED THE SHOWER HEAD ALL BY MYSELF.

As you can imagine, I was very, very, very, very, very impressed with myself.

So impressed, in fact, that I took the new shower head from the package and laid it out on Kyle’s side of the sink.  It had the exact same screw end as the previous shower head, meaning that both YouTube and common sense told me that it would go back on the way the former came off.  I got back on the stool, attached the crescent wrench to the new shower head, and PUT THE NEW SHOWER HEAD ON ALL BY MYSELF.

“Surely, this will leak,” I thought, imagining a cartoon-esque scenario in which the water would blast so hard out of the shower head that it would break through the back wall.  I put the stool and the crescent wrench away.  I got a pile of towels from the laundry room.  I called an old priest and a young priest, just in case.  Then I closed the shower door enough that only my arm would fit through, and turned on the shower.

You know what happened?  The shower did not leak; it turned on like a normal shower.

I was so excited that my initial instinct was to reprimand myself for not also installing a confetti drop on the ceiling because I HAD JUST INSTALLED A SHOWER ALL BY MYSELF, TA DA!

I cleaned up the bathroom.  In doing so, I found some kind of little part on the floor that looked like it was related to the shower head, so I set that next to Kyle’s toothbrush because that was his problem now.  Then I took an unnecessarily long video of the shower working and sent it to Kyle.

“Good job!”  He said, although I’m sure he really meant to write, “BEST JOB EVER,” because that was what it was.

As I type this, the shower head continues to work.  Nine was appropriately impressed and told me it was a “blaster” of a shower, which is what I was going for when I read all of those reviews (I want my shower experience to be akin to the jet power of a car wash).  Kyle is now home, and when I showed him the extra part he said, “Whatever,” and threw it away so I guess it was just for looks.

Every time I take a shower, I pat myself on the back – and the hips, and the pits, and everywhere in between, because the shower WORKS BECAUSE OF ME HOORAY ME.

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The photo above was taken by my maintenance man of the world champion shower fixer. She is sitting on a merry-go-round in West Fargo because the weather this weekend was incredibly beautiful and so every minute spent not ferrying Thirteen to hockey was spent outside.

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This week on North Dakota Today we talked about the Forever United Motorcycle Club, my Nice People of the Week, as well a free event to help you drive as safely as possible. (Valley News Live)

Bismarck’s Sparky the Gecko is back after a five-month adventure. (KFYR TV)

Speaking of Bismarck, Mike and Tanya Sampson hosted the 2nd Annual Skate for Logan in honor of their son to help families who may need a little help paying for their childrens’ activities. (KFYR TV)

West Fargo’s Titus Wollan, blind since age 1, has taught himself to play video games by sound. (Fargo Forum)

Grand Forks’ Rachael has donated 240 ounces to the Greater Grand Forks Milk Depot. (Facebook)

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