Too Many Ladies in My Bath

Showers are fine, they'll get you clean and ready for the work day. But on Monday mornings, I like to bathe.

When I lived in Oklahoma, I didn't even have a bathtub in the master bathroom. There was a small tub in the hallway bathroom, but the master bath just had a stand-up shower. I suppose it was sacrificed for the huge walk-in closet, which was nice. I didn't care except that it was as dark as a dungeon. I didn't know what I was missing.


When I moved to Tennessee, I wanted a big-ass master bath. I loved the place in Oklahoma, but it was thirty years old, and didn't have the features some newer homes have. The Tennessee place was brand spanking new, and had some beautiful features you only see in a new home, like an exhaust-free gas fireplace, dual-pane energy efficient easy-to-clean windows, and yes, a gigantic master bath with a big whirlpool tub.

I was looking forward to a nice bathing experience. I filled it with hot water, or as full as I could get it. The water heater couldn't quite fill the tub before running out of hot water. I dropped in some girly-smelling bubble stuff and let the whirlpool jets generate bubbles almost to the elevated ceiling. I got in and...sat. It was a letdown. It wasn't very relaxing, the water was tepid and I was bored.

So the gigantic master bath sat unused for a couple of years. I was kind of pissed. I found out from a lot of people that their big whirlpool bath goes unused. I would have none of it.

First I would address the tepid water issue. I looked into the in-line water heaters, but someone told me that I would be better off just turning up the temperature of my water heater. I looked and sure enough, the heat was set at the lowest setting. I cranked that sucker up to boiling. It's dangerous, you can seriously scald yourself. But there are no children in my house. Sure the heater sits around with hot water cooling off and heating up all day, but it turns out it's pretty efficient and doesn't use that much more energy.

Next I addressed the boredom. I had an extra LCD computer monitor sitting around, so I hooked it up to a DVD player with HDMI output. I mounted the monitor to a swing-arm on the wall and attached a stereo. It's sad that I can't play store-bought DVDs on it, because of retarded copy-protection schemes. Good thing there's fair use.

I tend to sleep in on weekends. I generally awaken zombie style at 6am on weekdays to prepare for the work day. But weekends are for being lazy and sleeping until I can't keep my eyes closed anymore. Sometimes it even screws up my sleep schedule. I'll stay up until the wee hours. Screw morning guy!  He can take it. He's tough. Let's watch Robot Chicken! Whoo!

But even if I've only had a few hours of sleep on Monday morning at 5am I get into a steaming hot bath and soak. I'll usually watch half a movie or a couple of episodes of a TV show. It's so relaxing and feels so good I don't even notice a lack of sleep. Normally if I don't get enough sleep I am nauseated in the mornings (grammar tip: nauseated means you don't feel well. Nauseous means you make others nauseated. Like noxious. If you say "I'm nauseous," you're not saying you're sick, you're saying you're nauseating.)

The only problem with the master bath now is that it has been invaded by ladybugs. Everybody likes ladybugs right? Not me. Especially when they drop in on you out of nowhere when you're naked in the bathtub. What the heck do you do about ladybugs, how are they getting into my bathroom and why? Normally I'd like a lady in tub with me, but not a ladybug. They're kinda nauseous. Ew.