And we walked off to look for America ....

We are off to The Villages in Florida tomorrow morning before the crack of dawn. So get ready for lots of silly "us" photos where we hold the camera in front of us and snap our beaming vacation faces. While at Nader and Hind’s this past weekend, I overheard Mr. Husband announce to the group that we are leaving for Florida at “4:30 am on Friday morning!” Wow. That’s amazing. I can’t wait to see Mr. Husband get himself up that early. But the man’s got initiative! Go, Mr. Husband! We’ve got it all planned out, but our plans are going slightly awry already. We’ll plug good ol’ Karen into the cigarette lighter (the Lumina is so old that it has a cigarette lighter) and let her guide us through the backwoods of Alabama and through the peachy backwoods of Georgia where we’ll slide into Florida in the early afternoon.

It’s imperative that we get to The Villages before happy hour at 4:00 pm. Dad has collected a mass of five dollar coupons for hamburger night at the Arnold Palmer Country Club. Sweet coupon special! We will all eat the coupon-burgers and drink two glasses of wine for the price of one. BIG glasses of wine. The wine glasses in The Villages are really goblets and not truly wine glasses. As if gulping is totally expected and required.

While Mr. Husband has the driving all planned out with the route we’ll take and the books we’ll read (I will read a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories out loud to the Mr. Husband-driving), it is my father who will take over as soon as we hit The Villages boundary line. Dad is in charge. Dad is so the boss of me and Mr. Husband. That’s ok, we do not mind at all for a week. Actually, it’s only going to be three solid days of Dad bossing us around and helping us to learn the right way to do everything. Monday night, we leave for Orlando to go to Disney World.

Yes! We will see the Magic Kingdom. And thanks to Mr. Husband’s incredibly organized boss, we will be one step ahead of the game. Gary, the boss man, has provided us with a meticulous list of Disney tips. An amazing list of Disney do’s and don’ts. A guide for what to do when and where to do it for the optimum Disney experience. We read the Disney Tips guide last night in bed, and I could see the perspiration break out on Mr. Husband’s forehead. He didn’t realize that preparing for Disney World is going to be like going to boot camp. We must pack and plan and get into fighting shape to make it to the best rides quickly first thing in the morning.

A challenge! I’m thrilled with the aspect of adventure! We are ever-thankful to Mr. Gary for putting us three steps ahead of that annoying family that cannot find their tickets at the gate. We will not hold up the line! We will lead the march. Here we come, Mickey!

Before the excitement of our first Disney adventure, we will spend three glorious days in the sun with mom, dad, Harold, and Lloyd. I will beg Harold to take me and Mr. Husband golfing with him. He’ll hesitate, look at my older brother (Lloyd), and then nod his head in agreement. The older brother will stoutly refuse to be seen with us anywhere near a golf course. Harold will put up with us for an hour or two. He’ll totally dread it as we’ll embarrass him and hold him up and not provide the best competition. But we will provide darn good conversation and the chance for Hario to be the star of the show. We promise, Hario, we will not beat you in a golf game. You are the champ! Bathe yourself in victory and please do not hate us for being such incredibly bad golfers.

After golfing with the family, hitting happy hour after happy hour with the family, going to Disney to partake in the Disney Challenge, Mr. Husband and I will visit Vero Beach where my older brother and sister-in-law live. We will visit the ocean and sit on the beach, drinking in her moony waves. We will sit in the sand and feel the waves drift over our legs while hunting for seashells near our earthy seats. It will be the ultimate relaxation. It will be the everything. It will so be the feather in our cap. We’re so ready to start the family vacation.

We’ll have the family Truckster all packed and will hit the open road with book in hand and hands on wheel. Vacation 2009, here we come!

The Beetle and the Burst Belt.

This week, the Beetle had an upset stomach. As I left work on Wednesday and started down Hwy 41 from Mt. Laurel, I heard something scrambling around under the hood. Monkeys! It must be monkeys under the hood because that’s exactly what it sounded like. Silly monkeys. I immediately pulled over after only consider for a second “should I continue driving?” and parked on the side of the highway. Fun. Wednesday was a hot day—so hot outside that you could chew the air. It was thicker than the foggy-pea-soup kind of day because thick-like-pea-soup, so-thick-you-can-cut-it-with-a-knife is typically not blazing hot-hot-hot. In a nutshell, it was a perfect Alabama day to spend on the side of an asphalt highway while waiting for AAA to rescue the Beetle.

I called Mr. Husband, making sure to let him know several times that I pulled over immediately, and explained the monkeys under the hood situation. Mr. Husband was in a meeting. He asked, “can’t it wait?” I looked up at the temperature gage to see the 96 degrees staring back at me and said, “No, you need to come now.” He sighed and left his very important meeting to save me. He sighed not because he didn’t want to help but because he was most likely saving the world or ironing his cape in the very important meeting. Mr. Husband loves his work. Fortunately, he loves his helpless wife just a smidgekin more. Apologies around to the work colleagues. It was over 95 degrees. I could have passed out or melted or at the very worst been bored to death.

Mr. Husband and the trusty Lumina (minus any known monkeys) quickly appeared on the edge of the highway. My knight in shining Chevy! Mr. Husband walked to the Beetle to examine the monkey situation. Sure enough, a Gibbon, a Mandrill, and a Howler monkey jumped out of the engine. I knew it! As they scurried away, running down Hwy 41 toward Greystone, we noticed that the curious monkeys had upset some kind of belt. Dangit. The Beetle burst a belt. She was down for the count. Undriveable. Will not go.

Mr. Husband took out his sword and called AAA. We were advised that it would be an hour and a half wait for the tow truck. What now? We can sit in the car and listen to NPR go on and on and on about Sonia Sotomayer, or we can have fun outside the car. Mr. Husband chose air conditioning, I chose the sun. Turns out my pick was the good pick. We skipped about on the side of the road. We took endless photos of me being stern with the Beetle. I laid in the grass near the Beetle, acting like a crash victim. We laughed and had fun and didn’t complain about the burst-o-the-belt.

Why complain? I, like, never do maintenance on that poor car. It’s a diesel, so I hardly ever get the oil changed. The last time I got the oil changed was in 2006. We live close to work and Mr. Husband really doesn’t fit in the Beetle, so she’s not driven that often. It was totally time for something to go awry. We accepted our fate and ran around in the sun until I could feel drops of sweat running down my back. When it’s hot-hot-hot, it’s better to give in and accept it that fight it. We were so very accepting.

The only complaint I had was that Mr. Husband wouldn’t play tag with me. I kept running by him and slapping him on the arm while yelling, “not it!” but he never chased me. I guess he figures I’m pretty much caught. I am it.

This morning, as I got ready for work, I remembered what it was like when I was single and had car trouble. I was alone. I didn’t have AAA. My parents lived in Florida. I didn’t have financial resources to help in an emergency. Almost any car experience was high drama with crying and the wringing of the hands and the pulling of the hair. I can be quite Jobian when I need to be. Car trouble put a serious dent in my life on many levels. It was always a disaster that led to high drama and the bringing of the tears.

Oh, how times have changed. Bob Dylan is right. He always was. I am drenched to the bone, keeping my eyes wide, and lending my hand to this great big changed life of mine. Now, when my car breaks down, it is now an opportunity to spend surprise time with Mr. Husband in an unusual situation. It is time for adventure and fun. There is nothing we cannot handle. Man, I love that man. He came into my life and dried up all the tears. He is so my Super Husband.

When the sun shines, they slip into the shade.

We know that everything we’re doing right now is leading up to baby. There are great big preparations around every corner. It is on the edge of our mind always. We listen to our friends and hear the complaints and revel in the happiness that we hear between the complaints. We are ever-planning. Our planning is not always the wisest or most conventional. What we are focusing most on right now is romance. Bring it! May we have romance with every day and (especially) with every night. We completely understand that when baby comes, all bets are off. Everything changes. Time is consumed by the crying one. This weekend, we bought another diamond band for the outside of my engagement and wedding rings. It has always been the plan in my head, but perhaps not in Mr. Husband’s head. Mr. Husband cringed when I lept into the air with joy! Want! Want! We jumped now when opportunity knocked and purchased the last Scott Kay wedding band that was identical to my current band that Bailey, Banks and Biddle had to offer. The jewelry store is closing in Birmingham. Another sad sign of the woeful economic times. The price was right, so we pounced.

That was a silly frivolous thing for us to do, but we did it because we will not be able to live like this—this right now—ever again. If all goes right and we squeeze out a sire to the Werewolf Lane throne, all will change. None shall pass. We will long for a shrubbery.

It is stuff like this that we’re sucking up with the no-freedom-all-for-baby future we have in mind. When we go to the bookstore to purchase books for a kid birthday (we always purchase books for any kid party), we have been secretly stocking our own hope chest with books … and clothes and puppets. Must have puppets. While not all items come directly from the bookstore, we are accumulating in an effort to see our baby dream realized. Every item we buy is precious to us. Mr. Husband is so good to encourage his crazy wife. What a fine man!

Mr. Husband and I ventured out on a Wednesday night for revelry that turned into a sweet, sweet date night. Surprise. Oh, yeah. We have romance. It snuck up on us from behind. It was riding on the back of an old vinyl record. We set out for an evening with leetle brother Chris at the Crestwood Coffee Shop where he works. He invited us to Open Vinyl Night at the coffee shop. We told him we didn’t own any vinyl records. We advertised our not being hip very loudly. We basked in our shame. And then we went on a mission: what if we became hip? Sounds crazy. Not possible. No. Yes. It can be done. We must set a course for hip! We can.

And we did. Well, maybe we did not achieve complete-total-sublime hipness, but we made a darn good effort. Our parents would be proud, but that’s not very hip. We know. We took a chance and ventured onto the other side of town. We like our leetle brother, so the evening couldn’t be all that bad, right? The evening was marvelous.

When we got to the Crestwood Center, the place that the coffee shop calls home, we saw that Crestwood Antiques was still open. We raced into the store before the owner could lock the door, and then we scoured the wall of vinyl record albums. In the brief five to seven minutes that we spent flipping through album covers, asking each other, “does this look hip?” “what about this one?” we noticed that a highly popular album at the antique store is “Jesus Christ Superstar.”
Too easy. There was lots of Chrystal Gale, Alabama, and Three Dog Night. There were entire sections devoted to music where you might know one song for the band but hardly recognize the entire album. There was an overwhelming 1950s section with orchestras accompanying some crooner in a white tuxedo—I call him Any Crooner. There was album after album after album for a dollar. A dollar. Dig it. We did.

We didn't have a lot of time. We had about eight minutes to establish ourselves as hip. We could hear the TV game show clock ticking down as we tried quickly to pick albums that would make us seem hip. Anything but Kenny Rogers! Skip over the 80s! Dodge Laura Brannigan! We moved fast.

We found four albums that we deemed potentials for establishing our newly found hipness: Instant Funk, Witch Doctor; Warren Zevon, Stand in the Fire; The Association, Greatest Hits; and Pearl Bailey, Around the World with Me.

As we sat at our table in Crestwood Coffee, he reading a book on the martial way of life and me reading a book on Teddy Roosevelt (both books that are part of the Crestwood Coffee library), we waited on pins and needles to hear the songs we’d picked out at random with blindfolds on.

Pick after pick was wonderful
and evoked great emotions and a dancing husband and wife. After a glass of wine, the two of us spent more time dancing in a sea of coffee-drinkers than we did tucked into the pages of our orphan books. We enjoyed one of the finest surprise-date-night-with-vinyl-and-dancing than we’ve ever had. And we will do it again. We will grow our vinyl. We will polish it like a brass band. We will venture there Wednesday after Wednesday until that blasted baby decides to make its appearance in our life.

Between the stress of trying to conceive—we must live. And we will. Crestwood Coffee and its Open Vinyl Night is where we will do that living.

The best part of the night was when Pearl Bailey sang in her velvety tones about Loch Lomond. We honeymooned in Scotland on the Highlands (as Dylan instructed we should), and that blind-folded pick put us right back there in our wool and our hats while walking in the rain. We were meeting in Scotland again in the morning in our heads and life was anew. May it continuously be so until baby Stewart decides to surprise us.

Garden Hose for Happiness.

We began to notice last weekend that something was missing from our lives. It was like a big gaping hole where the wind blew through in giant gusts of emptiness. It was like a memory that had faded before it was formed. It was so many metaphors rolled into one indescribable void—it was overwhelming. We were tripping over ourselves to correct the matter. We must strive to make our home the perfect home. We knew what was missing—it was staring us in the face and mocking us in schoolyard tunes. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but we did and we acknowledged that something must be done and quickly. It came upon us in the middle of the day that our life was not absolutely perfect for the very fact that we, the Stewarts, had no garden hose.

Noooooooo! No! Not that! Yes, that. That. The horror! We were out in the jungle and stumbling upon our very naked consciousness. The glaring omission of garden hose from our life was causing a chaotic stir of unfulfilled wanting within us that pushed us halfway to crazy. It is a garden hose that will make our home complete. Garden hose for sanity! Garden hose for happiness! Only one thing would fix this spinning mess—we must find garden hose. We must.

Friday, July 10, 2009: Mission Garden Hose for Happiness.

Recently, we’ve begun taking advantage of our side yard.
The side yard that we imagined a glorious low-light garden would occupy one day—something biblical with hanging plants and Toucan birds cawing from tropical treetops. The typical garden dream that most young couples have. However, upon moving in we are disappointed to find that the builder has filled in our side yard with pebbles. The kind of very small rocks that are way heavier than a duck. What now? The tropical-yet-low-light garden dream fades and we mope inside sitting in our dizzying darkness. But then the sun comes. And my skin needs tan. So we take a step toward trying to make the side yard into something. If nothing else—let us have fun. Let us have fun in the sun. Let me read. Let me tan. Let me enjoy my pebble-filled side yard in some sunny capacity.

We bought a teak tanning chair where I can read my books and sun my skin and stare at the sun to my heart’s content. Awesome. But hot. Hot. I need a pool. We don’t have a pool. Instead, I have the water bottle that I use to spray wrinkles when ironing clothes. I squirt and spray and layer my skin with life-saving water. Not good enough. I need help. Last weekend, I enticed Mr. Husband to join me in the sun-bathing side yard. Mr. Husband does not tan. The sun is not his friend. They are bitter enemies. But he joins me and he feels the sun being not so mean and kind of friendly on his skin. We use the little spray bottle to keep ourselves somewhat cool. We are laughing and fighting over who is taking up too much room on the tanning chair. We like this space. We like this side yard and the sunny time together and we begin to dream again.

We need a sprinkler or something to mist ourselves while we lounge about in the side yard on a sunny day. In order to achieve sprinkler, we need a garden hose. And then garden hose became the ultimate goal. Garden hose will solve everything. For all that’s holy and Angela Bassett’s ability to kick-ass—we need a garden hose. Our front porch pots will benefit, too. Score! Win! Bingo!

Garden hose.

So we plan for days. We consult a psychic and throw some magic stones in a chalk circle on the ground to determine the best day to achieve garden hose. To rescue an unsuspecting garden hose from Home Depot, we will be stealthy and dress in camouflage. The original plan while carefully thought out and mapped out on velum turned out to be more complicated than was necessary. We simply waltzed into Home Depot and saw a row of sparkling garden hoses before us—like they were waiting for us. Like it was providence. Garden hose we has!

The sprinkler part was harder. We knew that we also wanted a nozzle-sprayer contraption for watering and spraying the plants. To the garden shop! We roamed through Home Depot, hunting for the perfect sprinkler to turn our side yard into a magic water park that would save our summer and provide us with the ultimate spot in which we can sun and fun.
When we stumbled upon the row of sprinklers and sprayers, we found a most helpful mercenary who recommended a brass nozzle set that was on sale because the packaging had gotten destroyed. Yes! That’s the one for us. We care not for the packaging, but we like the options. Three options for $10. Like mana falling from heaven, we scooped up our nozzle and thanked the most kind mushroom-hair-headed woman. She also helped us determine the best sprinkler for our most unique situation. She told us we were the most fun she’d had all week.

We thanked her. I would have hugged her but my creepy-sensor stopped me.

Today, we enjoyed hours of garden hose fun. Mr. Husband hooked up our very first garden hose
and we turned on the sprinkler. We played with the sprayer and skipped about on the pebbles that were no longer hot but wet from the goodly garden hose dripping its sweet H20 nectar all over. Our side yard is reborn. We are made anew and washed in the saving grace of the garden hose and sprinkler-sprayer set.

Sweet summer, we are ready!

Fourth day of July: sun so hot, the clouds so low, the eagles filled the sky.

The Fourth day of July has new meaning now that my twin brother is in Iraq, putting up antennas for freedom. A lot of soldiers tell their families that they do not leave the base or go out on patrol. This is where I need to place Harold. He is on safe on base, sitting at a desk, staring at his golf clubs that rest restlessly against a wall in the corner of his makeshift office. He is dreaming about home while all the while doing the best damn job of putting up f-ing antennas to keep communication rolling on the base. The F-bomb in the previous sentence is for my twin. He is overly fond of the F-bomb. I f-ing salute you, Harold!

Harold loved fireworks growing up. Harold loved fire. If it was flammable, Harold was lighting it. One summer, Harold, Johnny Odom, and Chris Vogel had a genius idea to combine fire, tennis balls, and gasoline. Interesting mix for fourth graders. They’d dip the tennis balls in gasoline, light them, and then kick them. Their venue of choice, Dad’s garage, proved not to be the best location for such festivities. A fire ball soon got lodged under the lawn mower. Boom! Dad’s lawn mower blew up. A very small part of the garage was in flames and quickly extinquished. Harold wasn’t allowed near the gasoline for quite some time. Four years ago, when Mr. Husband and I ran into John Odom (no longer “Johnny”)—this was the experience he remembered: Harold and the flaming tennis balls. Harold was a forward thinker! Harold knew how to have fun. While not always safe, he was adventurous always. The Fourth of July always meant freedom and fire and fun.

So far, this year while in Iraq, Harold has recently been made promotable to Staff Sergeant and has been selected to go to the Audie Murphy Board to become part of the Audie Murphy Club. Big stuff. Lots of words. He is making great progress. I suspect he’s not sharing his recipe for tennis balls and gasoline. He is a soldier that we’re so proud of. All day yesterday, I thought of Harold as Mr. Husband and I enjoyed our random freedom. I don’t have any illusions—Harold is not fighting for freedom—but perhaps a little bit of what he’s doing as part of the larger machine is helping to ensure and protect freedom in the world. One small antenna for man, one giant antenna for mankind!
So Mr. Husband and I frolicked in the sun, we cooked side dishes for a cookout, we drank cold beer, and we lit fireworks to celebrate our freedom. There is nothing in the world that feels like freedom more than the right to blow off my own thumb with a black cat firecracker. Pop! Bang! You are free! You have no thumb!

Fortunately, my thumb did not get blown off, but I properly exercised my right to lose my thumb if I so choose and the firecracker is willing and big enough. This was the first Fourth of July where Mr. Husband and I played with fireworks. I was stunned to find out that my dear Mr. Husband, my careful, responsible, logical, cautious, never-speeds-like-ever husband had never lit a firecracker. Never. Not like once or twice, but never. How can this be? Is my husband a communist? Is he a pinko commie? Does he worship the state to the point of giving up all inalienable rights? My fears ran wild as I imagined what this new fact meant to me and to our marriage. Was the marriage over? Am I sleeping with a stranger? Oh, how my mind raced.

And then the simple conclusion blew up in my head like its own little firecracker: I must save him. I must lead my Mr. Husband to the loud fire-infested shores of bottle rockets, smoke bombs, roman candles, mighty pythons, sparklers, tanks, little hens that lay eggs of fire and pop, cobras, ground spinners, and—best of all—rockets with parachutes that fly high into the sky and come back down with kids hands-in-air chasing them. Mr. Husband was skeptical as most converts are when hearing the surprise knock on the door. I was alight. I was up in my pulpit, arms flailing, and words prophesizing about the glory to come. I was all fire and pop just at the thought of lighting the fuse and feeling the spark-spark-spark of little pieces of fire hitting my hand as I pull away quickly. It is a race to the side of the road. A race for life for fear of being the victim of a wayward rocket or not getting to the curb in time to turn around and see the magical wonder explode in the sky above. Soon, after rolling his eyes and seeing that I fully believed this was part of my wifely duty, Mr. Husband joined me willingly with a bit of little boy excitement.

I passed a lighter to him. We began the evening with a round of tank wars. His tank easily captured mine and won the battle. Victory! Mr. Husband is feeling it. We followed with a parachute man—Mr. Husband took off like a five-year-old, racing up the street to find his man. Soldier down! He rescued him with jubilant triumph. We joined forces with the family group across the street and lit a colorful mix of fiery wonder as the parents watched from my brother-in-law’s porch. We lit our small bag of fireworks with Mr. Husband genuinely enjoying himself. He was given a little bit of freedom last night as he learned that fireworks will not kill you, shoot your eye out, or blow off your thumb.

Next year: flaming tennis balls. Totally.

All you need is shelves, yeah, shelves is all you need ….

It has been a long month and a half that we’ve been living out of the guest bathroom. The guest bathroom does not provide the comfort that our super master bath with its five shower spigots offers. The master bath bath & shower combo is like hotel living. We’ve moved beyond that. It’s like we were shoved back into our little apartment and living right back on top of each other. There were stairs to climb in the morning (a plus for calorie burning), towels to remember to transfer, soap to carry up and down the stairs, and forgotten items here and there that never seemed to make their way up the stairs to the guest bath for total shower comfort. It was an inconvenience. The water pressure is weak up there in the guest bath and it only comes from one place. What is that? We can’t go back there. We were twenty steps away from a full-on suffer.

Before we were living out of a bathroom suitcase, we were living the high life with five shower spigots, room to jump and play, and a see-through door that provides orientation and shower-exit ease. I can go on and on about the many conveniences and reasons for why we prefer the master bath shower, but it really comes down to one principle: it is our master bath shower and we want to use it.

On May 24th, early in the morning, I stumbled upon bright orange moss and a tiny mushroom growing out of the baseboard trim to the right of the master bath shower. I was confused and stunned. I screamed! Our bathroom was under attack and living spores were marching to battle in our safety bathroom zone. Mr. Husband rushed in to save me from what was surely a monster of mythic proportions. As I stood there stunned, Mr. Husband annihilated the foe by wiping away the devilish fungus with a piece of toilet paper. Maybe he used 3-4 squares. It was quite a battle. And, me, totally in shock at the beast that had invaded our happy bathroom zone—I did not take a photo. Ah, but the image of the fiend is seared upon my mind. I see the orange and mushroomy shroom imprinted on the back of my eyelids.

Scarred I was. The sanctity of our shower zone had been defiled. Something was very wrong with our get-clean sacred space. It was dirty. It was damp. It was growing things. Ew.

Mr. Husband took the reins and vowed to rid our happy home of this intruder. It took him over 18 phone calls and 12 emails and almost a month and a half to see victory and have shower calm restored to our kingdom. The first step that the builder and his team of sometimes qualified and oftentimes unqualified soldiers did to investigate was to remove the baseboards from the master bath crapper. From the toilet bowl zone, we would watch to see water creep-creep-creep over the cement slab that was visible from behind the baseboards. This was the test site. This was the trial and error test site where we would run after taking a shower whenever the builder told us it was fixed. We were told, “the shower is fixed, try it out in the morning to check the slab to see if water still appears.” Four times we did this. 75% of those attempts revealed water. At one point, the water puddles got worse after a failed fix attempt.

They rebuilt our shower four times. FOUR times. Each time, they located a new problem. Each time, we’d shower and run around to the crapper to review the visible slab behind the baseboard to see if our shower would be our shower again. Yesterday, we saw no water. Today, we see no water. Two days in a row. The shower may be ours again!

The builder brought with him a thick layer of dust everywhere. The dust from constructing and reconstructing and reconstructing again and again our dear shower did not contain itself to master bath and bedroom—it covers our
living room floors and our kitchen counters. It crawled all over our home as a mocking reminder of the master bath shower fate. We will probably have to hire someone to clean the mess—I am not skilled enough at cleaning to tackle this job. Everything we touch has that slightly gritty feel of tile shavings and wood and grout.

And the end result? Marvelous. We were patient while the building and rebuilding continued. The shower experiment had to come to an end some day. We were fortunate to have a second bathroom and that we didn’t have to use the kitchen sink. If there were size issues in shoving Mr. Husband’s 6’7” frame in the guest bathroom shower, there are definite size problems in getting him clean from the kitchen sink. Of that, I am certain.

The builder tiled the shower all the way up the ceiling. They had never really dealt with the super shower with five water spigots before. Most people choose the whirlpool tub when given a choice between super shower and super tub. I grew up in a Kohler house with whirlpool bathtubs around every corner—we wanted something different. Sometimes different for us is also different for others. The builder didn’t quite understand how to plan for so much water. This is understandable.

To make it all better—they added two shower shelves for free. Shelves. Turns out, shelves is all we need. We are more than happy with our newly rebuilt super shower with 30% more tile and 100% more shelves. Shelves is all you need, yeah.