Please pass the Febreeze

My Advanced Writing professor is one of the emaciated-looking smoker types.  She’s very nice, and I have no complaints about her teaching, but it is hard to get your homework back reeking like an ashtray.  When she handed me my stack of papers, the smell half led me to expect a pile of ashes to fall from between the leaves when I picked it up to put in my bag.  Now every time I open my folder for this class, I am assaulted by a whiff of stale cigarette smoke.  I suppose the leftover scent won’t harm me, but I do find that odor rather offensive.  The campus is non smoking, so obviously she brought this stuff home to grade.  I half wish that there was a ban on subjecting students to second hand-second hand smoke smell from grading papers at home.

Yuck.

But, one of my papers I got back was my grammar test.  I got a 93%.  So, just so you all know, when I screw up it’s not because I don’t know better.

Three strikes you’re out. Flashback to last Friday…

So, just a week ago I wrote about my my shower caddy attempting to murder me.

Once I realized it was not a prowler attacking me in the shower, I calmed down, dried off, got dressed and decided that I needed to secure that bad boy better than previously.  It was not the first time the shower caddy fell, but the first time I wasn’t in the shower.  Now, I had a shower caddy of the same basic design at my old house which never budged an inch in 5 years, so I am not entirely sure why this one is so motile.  Perhaps it’s possessed with spirit of Norman Bates.

Or, more likely, it’s due to the ultra slick paint that beads water on the ceiling, and the fact that there’s no vent in the bathroom to suck out that moisture, causing a decrease in the static friction coefficient between the tension rod and the ceiling (egads, physics in my bathroom).  It could also be due to the fact that the shower has a rounded lip and corner and the ceiling is not plumb so I can’t really secure it between level surfaces.  Any or all of these practical reasons could be the culprit. But I can’t change the paint, or the tub, or make the surfaces parallel.  So I lengthened the tension pole, twisted it tight with all my might, and jammed it into the corner and hoped this time I had enough tension to outweigh my obstacles.

But I’m sure it really has it in for me.

It attacked again yesterday.  It chose to leap at me while I was shaving and, seeing as I had just set the shave cream back on the caddy, I was positioned facing it and saw it coming.

Thankfully, and this is a rather weird thing to be thankful for, I wasn’t scared this time, but supremely irritated.  Five years my shower caddy in my other house behaved and maintained its post faithfully.  Now this new caddy and new bathroom are not cooperating.  I hate when things don’t cooperate, especially things that you shouldn’t have to waste time worrying about.  It detracts from all the other important stuff I already don’t have enough time and energy to deal with.

So, it was obvious that there is either a defect in the tension rod that prevents it from maintaining its force on the ceiling and the tub, or the environmental flaws prohibit it from sticking in its place.  Either way, I can’t just get rid of the caddy, as there are insufficient surfaces for my soap, shampoo, razor and shave cream plus the stuff the owners keep in the shower for their convenience when they stay here.  And, money is tight; I don’t want to waste the money I spent on that shower caddy and buy a new one.  My last remaining option: ignore the ban on putting holes in the wall.

Yup.  For two dollars I bought a pipe strap and some screws and I strapped that wayward shower caddy to the wall above the shower sides.  I have no idea what’s behind the drywall there, or if the screws I bought will be sufficient to hold, but for now it seems solid enough….

Let’s hope that it stays nicely; I don’t want it to pull off a hunk of dry wall with it the next time it decides to go walkabout and I’d really like to shower without having to constantly keep one wary eye on my psycho shower caddy.