April 25, 2013

Hard water blues

While I wait for the news cycle to finish regurgitating tales of terrorism and return to normal stories -- like a rundown of all the terrible things the pope is doing -- I must turn to domestic topics for blog fodder.

Living in the middle of nowhere in upstate NY, I have hard water. This is a problem I never had to face when I lived in Manhattan. Hard water? What's that?

It causes all sorts of problems, like killing your hot water heater if you don't change the water regularly, and making it difficult to use bleach in your laundry. (Clothes turn brown.) But that's nothing.

The big problem is that the water has to be "treated" on a regular basis. A "water treatment" guy comes to the house and puts magic potions and powders into the water system to drive the hardness away. And voila -- your life is ruined.

For weeks after one of these treatments, the water feels slimy. You don't notice it when you're washing dishes. Nor does it taste funny. But when you get in the shower, the water is undeniably slimy. In fact, it's so slimy that you can't tell when you've washed the soap off. No matter how many times you rinse, it still feels like you have a layer of soap all over your body. There is no way to counter this. You step out of the shower feeling as if you're covered in soap.

I don't like hard water. I don't like it at all. And would someone please tell the news guys that we're officially tired of all the terrorism stories? It's time to move on.

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