You know the sound the lotto ball makes as it winds its way fatefully through the innards of the ball machine, thence into the waiting hand of the local “aspiring model”? It’s kind of a welling gurgle, rattle, thwop. Well that’s what my pipes sound like as they disintegrate. Did I mention that they’re disintegrating? Slowly but surely coughing themselves up, like a tuberculosis patient during her last moments.

The house where I live is old, and I’m pretty sure–if I have my history straight–that the druids who originally built it fashioned its plumbing from the hollowed out bones of their enemies. So really it was only a matter of time before the whole works began to give away. The pipe detritus gather like artifacts in the screen filters of my shower head, blocking the flow of water so as to cause random streams to go shooting up over the shower curtain like the frolicking water show at the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas, only less chintzy.

I know that this is something that I should deal with–and I don’t mean installing slot machines and charging admission. It can’t be good for me, regardless of my feelings for the welfare of my house. Maybe I’m just waiting for a sign that I should act. And if this is the sign, then I’m just waiting for a sign that this is the sign. Weeping boils might do the trick. Or actually, no, I’m calling to have this looked into first thing. After the holidays are over.