Bathing

Imagine this bathing area without the artwork or wicker. Or the bent-up metal blinds. Or the Dutch husband #2 (the previous owner's, not mine) out on the adjoining balcony. You can see him through the window.

Imagine soaking in this luxurious tub. It's spacious, it's warm. So very inviting. Can you imagine that?

Good, because no one can actually use this tub. It's a 200-gallon Jacuzzi with a broken heater. How big is your water heater? Our tops out at about 40 gallons. We can't find anyone who can fix it. Parts cannot be had. This has never really concerned me, since I prefer the hot tub under the stars anyway. My plan is to someday remove this useless hunk of fiberglass, install a smaller, one-seater soaking tub, and put another door out to the balcony. Someday this will be a lovely and spacious bathroom.

But for the moment that Jacuzzi lurks in the dark corner of the bathroom. Why dark, you ask? Because code says you cannot have a light fixture above a bathtub. And this tub takes up fully 20% of the bathroom real estate, and there's cedar paneling on the ceiling above the tub. The township building inspector made the builder (previous owner's husband #1!) take down the light fixture, so instead of repairing the ceiling, he installed cedar tongue-in-groove paneling. I stopped looking at it about 2 weeks after it was determined that it couldn't be used for a reasonable soak, which would make it about 2 years ago. It was approximately this same time that I stopped cleaning it. I use the side of it as a clothes rack from time to time. Okay, all the time. Otherwise, it's a void in the room.

Today I thought of a good use for the otherwise-useless Jacuzzi. My puppy has been swimming in the local ponds, the ocean, the reservoir, and our pool for the past year or so and hadn't had a bath in at least that long. She never smells bad, but she was feeling kind of dusty. I love to pet her, but don't particularly care for having to scrub my hand afterwards, so the time had come. I had the bright idea of taking her upstairs, carrying her into the tub (it was unlikely she could escape on her own) and using the shower-head (which can be seen at the right of the photo) to wet and rinse her. She didn't even mind me picking her up so much. Since there is a seat (two, actually) in the Jacuzzi, I had excellent support while lifting her in. She's not small - she probably goes about 65 lbs. at the moment, but since she didn't fight me it was no problem.

When the water finally got to tepid, I wet her down and began working in the shampoo. She needed a bit more wetting, so I picked up the shower head, which promptly separated from the hose. Completely, and irreparably. No biggie - I could still use the hose end to wet her down. She began to get a little nervous when the water began backing up in the tub. It was not draining because it was clogged with dog hair. Soon everything was covered with dog hair - the cedar paneling, the tub edges, and me. No matter. This has never been a delicate affair. Even back in Illinois, where I could set up a beach chair in the middle of the basement floor and wash her near the floor drain, I would come away looking like Patricia Arquette in Human Nature.

Since there was no shower head, all I had to work with was a small stream of water, so it took quite a long time to rinse the pup. She was unhappy with me. She started to scale the tub walls and was almost out at one point, but I was able to grap a hold of the hair on her back and drag her back to her torture. Then she'd back into a corner so I couldn't rinse her rear, or try to sit, or turn around. She clearly had had enough. I was in total agreement. But I had to towel her down a bit first, and lay the rat towels (oldies with holies) on the tile floor so she wouldn't slip, and then I coaxed her out. She was anxious about it, probably because I'd screamed at her and yanked her fur the last time she tried that route. Nevertheless, she's adaptable, and stepped out of the tub with a lot more poise that I had.

Mission accomplished. Once bathed, Inti likes to run around like a mad dog and rub herself on the carpet and tonight was no exception. I don't know if she was happy to be clean or just happy to be away from me. Whatever. I looked back into the tub and realized another thing I never liked about it: the drain is actually a smidge higher than the rest of the bottom of the tub. Oh, this was some quality craftsmanship!

I raked all the hair that I could out of the tub, and took a shower. (There was as much dog hair in the shower stall off me as their was in the tub from her.) Before exiting the bathroom I took one last look at the behemoth in the corner. That ugly bastard has got to go. And I don't see any point in cleaning it again.