I swore that I would never take a cold shower here because of a lack of hot water. I swore it! I would never have faced a time where I would willingly put my body into an already cold environment and hose it off with cold shower that leaves a very creepy, slimy sensation no matter how hard you try to scrub it off... but that's another gripe for another blog day. I swore that though I might rinse off, by choice, with "colder" water just to cool down, but I was NOT going to take a shower when there was no hot water to be had. That's what I have a year's supply of baby wipes and no-water shampoo for. Oh, for the record, the "No Rinse" brand of no-water shampoo? Avoid. But I digress. I swore I would not stand in the shower with my teeth chattering, cursing Afghanistan and all its inhabitants, miserable and angry, all in an attempt not to smell vile. Apparently, I was wrong. I don't know what happened, really. I had a great workout and was really excited about the shower. For those who haven't yet gotten a description of them yet, the showers are a decent enough little set up. I think there are about 6 or 7 stalls in each (never bothered to take an official count and I just can't picture it well enough right now), two sinks with two faucets, mirrors, a bench for our belongings, and hooks. They request that we take "combat" showers, which means that we only use the water to wet & rinse, while keeping it off during the soaping/shaving/shampooing processes. There are two of these shower trailers for the women, quite a bunch for the men. The women's showers are at opposite ends of the block. That means that one is not very convenient to get to, but that's okay. There's not usually a need. Sometimes it's bad enough to get to the close one. We have to walk over the rocks, through the engine bay, over more rocks, across the road, over the bridge (it's a 4' bridge but it still counts), across more rocks (such a theme here!) then we get there. It's not awful but I'm not a fan of the rocks. To get to the other requires even more rocks. You can see why I prefer the closer one, right? Well. I get to the shower and there are about 3 open, but two of them have shower heads that have sprung a bit of a leak. And by that, I mean that the water doesn't come out of the shower head but instead it sprays out of the hose at various points along the route. Pointless to try to shower there! So I take the last open good one. I get it. It's just as wonderful as I think it is going to be.
...and then.
I noticed the next time I turned the water on that it wasn't very warm. I did not approve of this situation at all. Not only was it not warm, it wasn't even tepid. I got to take a downright cold shower. One of my roommates was in the stall next to me. She complained bitterly about it. I tried to keep the word "invigorating" running through my mind. It seemed that the more I mentally said that word, the less room I had for the cursing that was trying to come out. Do you know that there are people in this world who take cold showers on purpose? And worse than that (aah, this is where I reground myself), there are a lot of people who never even get to take warm showers. Ugh. How can I complain about that so easily? That reality is brutal sometimes. I thought it was bad washing my face in the mornings with my cold bottle of water. I guess it's not so bad, is it?
At any rate, I got to have my first unwilling COLD Afghanistan, slimy-watered shower today. Woo hoo! :)
And in other news, we got a call from our vehicle tech on the radio asking us to call Vector Control because there was a fox outside the station. A fox! I was so excited. Granted, the little baby was pretty mangy looking, but she was a cutie pie! She was drinking from the puddles of water around our big water bladder. So very wonderful to me to see wildlife. I miss it so much. I miss animals with every ounce of my being, but even wildlife was enough to restore me. I guess we'll be seeing her a bit. Seems as if Vector won't do anything with them for a while. Yay! Okay, nobody needs to remind me of the diseases that a mangy animal can carry. Don't rain on my parade!
And speaking of rain, the weather shocked me today. First day in months where we were above 65, and they said our high was going to be 71 but it felt definitely warmer than that. It was downright comfortable in the sun! And sweatshirts to dinner with no need for the gloves, scarf, and/or beanie. I'm sure we'll still have a few more weeks, if not a month or two, of very chilly nights, but it felt great to have my skin bake a little bit today.
Alright, kids. It's bedtime for this redhead... and I'm very ready for it. I'd been having a horrid string of sleeplessness again but I think I've shaken it for a while so I'm going to try to take full advantage of it. Sorry there are no pics today but I didn't have time to grab my camera for the fox and I didn't think it would be a good idea to give visual aids of the showers. At least not while occupied.
Goodnight, all. And to those of you on the other side, Good Morning!
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