Taking a Bath

Something I dislike about our master bathroom is that the shower and bath are separated. Our old house, and every house I’ve ever lived in, had a shower in/over the tub. This new house, though, has a shower “closet.” The big oval tub is a waste of room space since it seems to never get used for anything.

I used to really like taking a “shower bath.” Close the curtain, turn on the hot shower, plug the drain, and lay down in the warm, filling water. I absolutely loved spending half an hour in my hot and floaty sensory deprevation chamber — the sound of the shower drowned out the rest of the world, (no pun intended). I’ve lost this little joy. I can’t lay down under a hot shower, now.

A few nights ago, while showering off after a workout, I decided to give the bathtub a try. I turned off the shower, stepped out, and turned on the water in the tub. I poured in some shampoo to give me bubbles, and then I stepped into the water.

The “garden tub” is big enough that I’m not cramped up, but it’s not big enough to really stretch out in. The back of the tub is contoured for laying back and propping up your arms, which is nice, if not truly comfortable. It takes a lot of water to fill the thing, even with my body taking up a sizable volume.

Once the water got deep enough to cover me, except for my head and knees, I turned off the faucet. I lay there a few minutes, just soaking up the warmth.

You can’t really move much in a full tub for fear of spilling water over the edge of the tub onto the floor. And once the water is turned off, the bathroom is strangely silent. And since this tub doesn’t have a shower, we don’t have a curtain for it, so I felt kind of out in the open should someone come in the room.

I just lay there, still and quiet for several minutes. I was afraid to move much, and every little splash or bump echoed loudly in the room. I was glad that I had already washed while in the shower, because there was no way I could really do anything productive sitting there in that full tub of water.

The minutes ticked away, and I just couldn’t stand it any more. There was nothing relaxing about the whole thing. I was afraid to move, I heard every sound in the house, (and out of it), and the water was quickly loosing its warmth. I pictured the stereotypical woman sitting in her tub, candles around her, reading her book. I thought, “There’s no way I could read a book in here. It’d get wet.”

Once I had as much bath time as I could take, (about 10 minutes), I pulled the plug to let the water out. As the water drained, I realized a drawback to having bubbles in a bath: bubbles don’t drain. So when the water was all gone, I was left there covered in white bubbles. I stood up, nearly completely clothed in a cloud of suds, and stepped out of the bath. I had to go back into the shower to rinse off.

After rinsing and then drying off, I saw all the suds still in the tub. I had to run the tub faucet again and splash all the bubbles to clear the tub.

What a pain in the butt that whole experience was. There was nothing enjoyable to that at all. I came out of the bathroom more stressed than when I had walked into it. I’ll never take another bath like that.

I so miss having a shower over a tub. I might have to take over the boys’ bathroom some night so I can relive my old relaxation technique. That might even be more fun than it used to be because I can play with their toys while in the water.

Bullgrit