Valve Stem.

To ride back from the game in 27215 with my ex-landlord JLT means to ride at approximately 19 mph through Elon and Gibsonville and Sedalia and then and only then to pick the interstate back up around McCleansville and yes carry that to the other side of Greensboro altogether. This is not the way one goes to 27215 with JLT. To get there, one drives the interstate most of the way but stops eventually at JR's Outlet Humidor Stetson Hat Jeans And Additional Variousnesses Emporium to purchase peanuts for thirty cents less than they're on sale for at the game, and then one also stops of course downtown at Zack's for a hot dog, which is not quite as good as those on sale at the game.

To renovate a bathroom means to be sure you're almost done only to discover that the hot water valve is so stuck to whatever it screws into that you may in fact have to call a plumber just to show up at the door, unscrew the thing for seven minutes or so, and then collect $150 for the pleasure of owning the correct wrench.

The 27215s gave up one in the eighth and another three in the ninth, the last two coming on a bomb of a home run over the Alamance Fencing Co. sign in left-center.

If I spray the valve for twenty minutes with WD-40, it'll turn a quarter-turn.

On balance, certainly, things are fine. I'm not bodily on fire, and I got to see a ball game. It rained a tenth of an inch yesterday.

Still. I had plenty of time, riding home at about the speed I can run, or used to be able to run, to think endlessly and only about how the shower valve is somehow a symbol of both whatever fiasco is occurring in my life right now, and whatever new one looms out there on the horizon. The valve is a metaphor for the next valve.