Recently I’ve seen several articles touting the emotional and physical benefits of a nice, warm, relaxing bath. Run the water, add bath salts, add fragrance, dim the lights. Soak. Let your mind and body relax. You need the disconnect from life and it promotes a restful night. I could use both the disconnect and the restful night, so why not?
There is a regular size bathtub in a guest bedroom and a larger, corner whirlpool tub in the master bath. I’d go for the big one. I rinsed it out, turned the stopper and let the water pour in. Bubble bath and some smelly bath salts. I had a bath towel handy along with facial scrub, bath pillow for my neck, shower poof, and soap. Ahhh, this would be a nice long soak.
I undressed and got to the edge of the tub. Challenge one. The tub is higher than a normal tub, and the edge is wider to accommodate the controls and the outside tile work. OK. Sit on the edge (ouch, it’s cold), put one foot in, then the other, then sit down. What? Sounds easy enough but I’m a big gal so I carefully put a hand on the edge and one on the handle by the controls and started to carefully sit down, which became a rather undignified plop. Oh, the water felt nice.
This is a whirlpool but if you have ever turned the air jets on in a whirlpool tub when you’ve added bubble bath you know that you instantly create gazillions of bubbles, so I would swirl only in jets of water, and get much the same effect except that there was a glitch. My arm was next to the water and air control but the power control that operated them was next to my foot. I reached, then twisted, then grabbed the handle, then slipped a bit, and then wisely decided to just soak quietly.
Next time I would turn on the water before getting into the tub. That would work but then I can’t let the water out of the tub while I am still in it because the jets will be running and they will run out of water to pump and I could end up breaking the pump before I was able to stand up and turn off the power.
The next 15 or so minutes were lovely. Hubby was sleeping soundly, as were the cats (who otherwise would be pawing at the door). No noise, just soft ripples of warm relaxing water. I’d get a good night’s sleep, I’d be one step ahead in the morning, I’d be relaxed. So nice.
But alas, it was time to get out of the tub. This is where it gets “interesting.” There were a lot of soap suds from the bubble bath so I reached over to grab the sprayer, turn on the water and rinse those down. Whoops! Sprayer over my left shoulder and water controls over my right. Well, I’ll just let some of the water out first. Turning the round handle that controlled the stopper I remembered that the stopper only comes up about a quarter inch, leading to a very slow drain of the large tub. Hmmmm, OK, I’ll just take the stopper out. There, that is a much faster running drain. But noisy, very glub, glub, glub, noisy. Put the stopper back and select slow over noisy.
Get up. That’s it. Stand up so you can get out of the tub. This might sound very silly but when you haven’t taken a bath for quite a bit of time, and the edges of the tub are higher than a regular tub, and you are a woman of some size, in a tub with bubble bath filled water, standing up in the tub is a CHALLENGE!!!! Hold the handle with one hand and another on the edge of the tub. Lift up. OUCH, that’s my bad shoulder. Roll over and try the other side. NO. Nothing to hold on to securely. Try again. I’m wondering whether this is what happened to Whitney Houston when she drowned?
Should I call for help? Yeah sure. The bathroom door is closed and my hard of hearing hubby is sound asleep with his CPAP machine (for sleep apnea). The odds of him hearing me are somewhat remote. In fact, the neighbor’s dog would hear me before hubby heard me. Finally, I was able to get up on my hands and knees and wait for all the water to drain out. Very carefully I got one hand securely on the sink counter and stood. But I was covered in suds so I had to find the sprayer and rinse myself off. I took my time moving my legs out of the tub and over the edge onto the safety of the bathmat, thankful that I was safe and making all types of mental notes about future attempts at a soak.
The next morning I began to recount my adventures to my hubby, but he stopped me. He’d been through the same thing recently. We think our Christmas present to ourselves will be a larger shower and no tub, or maybe a tub with one of those doors in the side, or, well, we don’t know. I still like the idea of a nice, long, soak. Maybe I’ll try the tub in the guest bath but I will be sure hubby is near by in case I need a helping hand.
Are you able to easily get in and out of the tub? Only answer if you are over 70!
Every Day Is A Good Day – VJ
everydaywithvj 