There are two explanations for this: for one, I'm a dude, and dudes shower (unless you are The Dude - and how did taking a bath work out for him? That's right, a ferret gnawing at his 'nads). And the other: in nine years I haven't razed the bathroom to the ground and made it breathtakingly bath taking-worthy.
The “head” is pretty sad. It is the gateway between the master bedroom and the rest of the house, because there was no way to add on to the majestic, original, six hundred square feet while thinking in horizontal confines. This means there are 2 doors: that's a big limit for such a small space. If you happen to be sitting on the toilet, you have a sink in your face. If you are aiming for the toilet, and you have broad he-man sized shoulders like me - you are contorting into an asymmetrical caricature of you in full; if you are hitting anything other than the right side of the bowl you are accomplishing an Olympic feat.
And then there's the tub.
It is an old fashioned, claw-foot tub. Or so I suppose. I haven't removed the sheets of fiberglass in which it is ensconced to really check it out. This is one thing I've learned as a homeowner: tearing things down is an easy commitment to a project that takes months to complete...months that your real full-time job doesn't have the dreamy idealism to humor.
So it is a real tub, kept in place with glitter-speckled white laminate sheeting and black, eroding caulking. Definitely something that you don't want to relax in; not in a prone position. Also: I haven't cleaned it since the ex left. The boys might understand: dude.
But I was having an overwhelmingly taxing day at work today. The kind where you lose your focus, and the only relief is to be anywhere but being at work. I took a couple ibuprofen, and that didn't work. I took a nap in the "short term parking" room, and I still wasn't sated. To add to my troubles, I knew I'd be working from 2100 - 0100 tonight from home. Home was not looking like the relief I was looking for.
And I'm not sure how it came to me, but I got stuck on this thought: I'm going to go home. I'm going to draw a bath. I'm going to finally take a bath in my home.
It hounded me to the end of the work day. I took off at 14:30, was home by 15:45, and set to work on making my tub something I didn't fear. Armed with Mr. Clean's Magic Eraser (MADE IN GERMANY; Ingredients: "contains no phosphate" (wtf?)), and another, less questionably toxic bathroom cleaner, I scrubbed the tub down to its drain. It was a process, one that reminded me why I don't do bathrooms.
That took an hour, enough time for other complications to arise: Where did the bath salts go? I swore I had a drain plug, where the fuck is it? It's the afternoon, why am I getting no water pressure? But I tracked down the former, found the second after much searching, and had enough time to endure the latter (though the bath faucet - rarely used - never transcended groundswell brown to a crystal brilliantine).
I've never treated myself to a lavender-salt bath. And I like to think of myself as pretty metro. After taking another 45 minutes to fill the bathtub, this is what I had on my hands:
Not pretty. But I don't intend to have my eyes open for long. While waiting for the tub to fill, I set up a tiny boom box CD player and selectively selected Lindsey Buckingham's most recent album to zone out to; I also laughingly turned a smartass remark my father once made about my more leisurely obsessions into a half-assed haiku:There he goes my son
He who loves soap and candles
So proud he's my son
And I slip in. The salts feel like I'm bathing in champagne and I double the dosage (it burns a little, but I probably shouldn't have dumped it on my stomach)...and the hours I took to get here are magically erased (TM). I have one bad moment when I realize that whoever designed this tub, designed it with the water escape too low. I cover it with one foot, a small sacrifice.
Look at that. I let them go and rest, and my arms are floating. I'm floating in my own home. Nine years, and I'm only floating in my home now.
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