You know you're grown up when ...

The title, "Because I'm old," would be okay too.

Because I am old and have a kid and own a home, my priorities have changed. Now, instead of spending money on wine or martinis and male prostitutes, I horde my money for months, obsessively checking my ING balance, only to spend it on a water softener from Sears.

Being excited about this purchase says both something about my station in life as well as the quality of the water in Woodland. The water is so hard that the first few months we lived there my skin peeled relentlessly; I still have to apply a very thick layer of Cetaphil within minutes of showering otherwise my entire body itches and feels stripped of all oil. Our neighbors have had to replace valves in their brand new toilets because of calcification, and if you don't squeegee the shower immediately after using it, the glass doors are covered in scale to the point they are opaque. Hell, they're covered in scale even if you do squeegee, but it helps a little. Our coffee maker struggles to brew a pot of java in the time it takes me to get ready in the morning, and our brand new black refrigerator has a stream of white residue from the water/ice maker that needs to be scraped off with a metal file. Our brand new washer has gone from spewing forth hot water like a geyser in Yellowstone to having it trickle out ever so slowly, and lucky for us our white clothes are now a dingy shade of yellow.

This is my very long winded way of saying that I cannot wait for this salt bearing behemoth to make my skin feel slimy with soap residue, and that being old is very good indeed. Who needs martinis when you can shower and not be itchy?