The one about my shower

Okay. Let me tell you about the past 5 hours of my life.

8:15AM I wake up with a call from my work telling me that I was supposed to be in at 8. Startled and befuddled I hastily put on a dress and a headband and run out the door.

8:30AM I finally arrive and proceed to feel disgusting and disheveled for the next 3 1/2 hours.

9:00AM Put on a little makeup to distract everyone from my bed-head

9:30AM - 12:00PM I become bombarded with calls and almost have a panic attack while simultaneously reading about 20 posts from busybeelauren's blog...I got sucked in okay?

12:00PM I come home to take a shower and regroup from my rude awakening this morning.

So there I was a'showering just minding my own business, when the water pressure suddenly dropped down to a dribble. (A drizzle?) I literally couldn't effectively bathe a hamster with the amount of water that was coming out of the faucet if that sheds any light on the issue.

Now, this isn't the first time I've encountered this problem. It has happened a few times since I've been living in my new apartment and I've discovered that it only occurs when someone else in the apartment is using hot water. (Seriously the only annoying thing about living here. You can't run the dishwasher, washing machine, run two showers at once...One hot water source at a time OR ELSE.) So anyway, I had just seen my roommate Christy leave and knew that my other roommate Haley was in class. That left my elusive Korean roommate "Jackie" as the only suspect. I figured she must have started her laundry or was doing dishes or something insane and I had to communicate to her somehow that she MUST STOP.

In my family growing up we had a fool-proof system for when someone needed something while they were in the shower. My mom came up with the idea that all you have to do is bang on the wall and there was a mutual understanding that someone would come see what was up. Maybe you realized you needed your new bottle of shampoo in the linen closet. Maybe there were no towels in the bathroom because you and your sister were in the middle of a towel war over who got the "big purple one." Whatever the problem, all it took was a good pounding and someone was bound to hear you and respond.

Desperate and freezing, I thought that this method might work in my current predicament. The water had shut down immediately after I had covered my entire body in soap so I couldn't just walk out all soapy and naked to investigate. Nope. So I tried the only thing I knew.

THUD THUD THUD.
No response.
THUD THUD THUD. "Hello...Is somebody using the hot water...?"
Still nothing
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHU "HEY IS ANYBODY OUT THERE? HELLO?" THUDTHUDTHUD
More nothing. Just the mocking sound of a trickling stream of water.

Well, eventually the pressure came back. I don't know how, or why, but I know that the pounding method most definitely did not work. I think at one point during the episode I even heard someone somewhere say "Come in!"

Moral of the story: Learn an alert and response system for shower times in your home. Without them we are all lost.