A Steamy-Hot Soak

by Cassondra Murray


Do you have a shower in your house?

No, I don't mean a baby shower or a wedding shower. I mean the kind in the bathroom...the kind you stand under to wash your hair and get clean.

I don't.

Do. Not. Panic. I engage in cleansing activities daily. Ones involving lots of water and soaps, shampoos, masks, scrubs and exfoliants. But other than a two-year stint in an apartment after I was first married, I've never lived in a home with a shower. I've always had bathtubs.

I grew up in a tiny farmhouse on a gravel road in rural southern Kentucky, miles from the nearest town, and when I was a small child, our facilities included a path and, at night, a flashlight. I am living proof that the lack of an indoor bathroom as a child...well, it won't keep you out of college.

We had running water in the kitchen, but no water heater. I still remember taking a bath each evening in our huge, oblong galvanized bathtub--complete with sloped ends for leaning. My mom heated water on the stove and carried buckets of it into the bathroom. I splashed and splashed in that tub, with my own armada of toy boats floating around me.

I was still very small when one day I came home from my grandmother's house and the outside wall of the bathroom had been knocked out. The bathroom was really just a glorified closet in our old house, and to add the fixtures and appliances, my dad had to extend the room about two feet beyond the main body of the house. It looked a bit like a hump on a camel really, when it was finished, with the fixtures barely squeezed in. We had the shortest tub available, but still, the "hump" had been added onto the house to make it fit.

The fancy new bathtub was shiny and fun--and slippery. The thing I wanted most, though, I didn't get. No way, no how, no matter how much I pleaded, were we getting a shower.

My dad, until the day he died, refused to believe that he would use less water with a shower than a bath.

It was runnin' all the time, for cryin' out loud. How could it use less?

We had a well, so it wasn't as though we were paying for the water monthly, but like most parents who'd grown up in the Great Depression, he had a thing about not wasting stuff, and in particular he did not want to waste water. It's understandable, when you realize that any water he had as a kid, he and his family had to carry from a spring or pull up from a well in a bucket. He figured the whole "showers use less" mumbo jumbo was propaganda spewed by the plumbing industry so they could sell more fixtures.

That "save water" mentality has left me always aware of my water usage, and with many areas of the country in drought and dealing with water shortages, I'm now glad I grew up with that awareness. Then, though, I wanted a shower for the sheer joy of standing underneath that steamy stream.

That's why I still want one.

My college dorms had showers, but let's face it. Most dorm showers are lousy, sterile, non-private experiences, and bear no resemblance to the glory which an excellent shower in a gorgeous tiled bathroom with an adjustable-pulse shower head can be. But for the college years, I at least had a shower. Then I moved into an old house, and I've had tubs ever since.

Here's the thing though.....in our present home, and the one just before this, I didn't have just ANY tubs. They were, and are, claw foot tubs. Big old honkin' cast iron monstrosities sitting on iron feet.

I love showers. I probably still like showers better, truth told. They're energizing. And I'm not the only one. I asked around about this. Okay, I asked Jeanne and Nancy. Hey, they were available. Duchesse Jeanne is totally on the shower side. She doesn't mind baths, but rarely takes them, and could live just fine with only showers in the house.

Nancy, always examining both sides of the argument, states the merits of each. "For washing hair or cleaning up after a workout, the shower is primo," she says. But "for relaxing and/or contemplating the mysteries of the universe, nothing compares to a bath. And ya can't read in the shower."

Hmmmm. I happen to know that Nancy has a claw foot tub in her house.



Mysteries of the universe notwithstanding, I've always just loved showers. And my husband, contrary to the "women like baths, men like showers" expectation--actually prefers baths. I could postulate that he thus lacks incentive to help me install a shower in the house, but, well...better not to go there.



But you know what? Those claw foot tubs, over all these years, have had a rather profound effect on me. Not just on the shower vs bath question. This is about quality. The claw foot tubs have raised the proverbial bar.

This past spring, I traveled to visit friends who have showers in their home. They have walk-in showers, mostly, but in two of their bathrooms they also have the tub-with-shower-surround combination which is common in most American bathrooms.

I'd been taking showers at their house for several days. Yummy hot showers with lots and lots of wonderful steam. But at some point, I leaned over to shave my legs and for the umpteenth time, got a face full of hot shampoo-ey water draining off of my head--and a face full of wet hair. The water ran into my eyes and made me have to stop shaving, let my contacts clear up so I could see, wipe off my face with a towel, then bend over again to shave my legs....rinse and repeat soap-in-face experience. And repeat. And...you get the idea.

Who the blazes designs shower enclosures? Men? That's what I'm guessing. If women designed these things, there would be a little bench-like step for you to put your foot on--or maybe even sit on--so you could shave your legs without eating wet soapy hair.

Oh and there would be lots of places to set bottles and such. Spots where they would actually, oh, I don't know, stay in place, perhaps? Radical thought, that. And the soap dish would be designed so the soap would not slide out as soon as the water hits it. You know...WET soap would stay put. I've noticed that dry soap does fine as a decoration in most shower soap dishes. Clearly, the shower designers are not actually testing these enclosures under actual dirt-removal conditions.



Several days into these sub-standard shower experiences, I came in from a long day of tromping around a museum, walked into the guest room at the back of the house and I wanted a bath.

I ran the tub full of water, poured in some shower gel to substitute for bubble bath, and climbed in. Ahhhhh. Soothing hot water. Poofy bubbles. I leaned back. And promptly banged the back of my head against the wall of the shower surround. There was not enough slope to the back end of the tub for a nice, relaxing lean. And what lean I could get, well, it didn't do any good because once I'd leaned, my head was shoved forward by the shower wall so my chin was almost on my chest and my neck was hyperflexed.

Ow.

Who, precisely, designed this tub? I'm betting it was somebody who takes showers.

I sat up in the water and was enlightened on a couple of matters. First, my head needs several inches beyond the tub before it hits the wall, and it should be illegal to build tub-shower arrangements without said inches present. Second, my antique claw foot tubs, all hand-me-downs from old houses I've lived in, or from ones which have been torn down, are treasures for far greater reasons than their antique value alone.

At home, in the evenings just before bed,


I run a tub of hot water, and pour in stupid amounts of bubble bath. I light a scented candle, turn off the lights and climb in. The back wall is sloped perfectly for a gentle recline. I roll a towel to rest behind my neck and just soak. And soak.

I lie there and soak until I turn to a prune. If it's raining, the way it is now, I listen to the pitter-pat of the drops hitting the window near my feet. On summer nights, tree frogs sing me to sleep. And sometimes I do fall asleep, waking when the water cools, with all of the tension soaked out of my body.

I learned some years ago that I like a shower in the mornings because it's energizing, and I like a bath at night because it's relaxing. So in this, Nancy and I are alike.

Some seriously fantastic love scenes I've read have been set in showers. But then, the best shots in movies are in the tub--with the sexy starlet barely hidden beneath the piles of bubbles.


I am campaigning for a shower in our bathroom. (We have only one bathroom, since we're restoring this old house, and one is as far as we've gotten). It'll save water, and it'll be faster and more efficient. And it'll energize me in the mornings.

But it'll have to be one of those gooseneck showers with the suspended curtain rod over the claw foot tub. Because although I love, love, love showers, no fancy spa jets will convince me to switch out my cast iron tub for a walk-in shower stall.

I'd love both, but if I have to choose, I'll keep my candlelight soaks, with the little table just to the side, for my glass of wine.

What about you, Bandits and Buddies?

Do you have showers or bathtubs in your house?

Have you ever had a claw foot tub? Did you love it or hate it?

If you had to choose one or the other, would it be shower or bath for you?

If you like baths, do you like bubbles?

If you prefer showers, are you the "in and out in five minutes" type? Or do you like a long, indulgent shower just every now and then?

What's your favorite shower scene from a novel?

Have you read any steamy scenes involving bathtubs?

I'll give a $5 gift card to Bath & Body Works to one commenter.

Fireflies

by Cassondra Murray

Steve and I went to Sonic tonight. Yes, we were desperate for quick, easy food. It's been a hard, fast, three-weeks-of-hell beginning to the summer (you'll hear more about that in later blogs from me almost certainly).

I don't have to work tomorrow for the first time in about 15 days straight, AND I'm sort of back online after a computer meltdown. Slow connection, but it's there. So the last thing I was gonna do tonight was cook. Okay, so there are stacks of boxes and books and the leftovers of a major garage cleanout piled in my kitchen and dining room, but the fact that I can't get to my cookware may or may not be a factor in the Sonic decision.

For you unfortunate souls who don't have Sonic near you, it's a double-sided drive-in with a big patio in the center. You can order right from your car, or you can get out and sit at the tables on the patio. We'd dug our way, with those stupid flimsy plastic forks, at least three bites into our foot-long chili-cheese dogs when we noticed the little girl at a table in the center.

She was probably seven or eight years old, and had on a purple outfit with a big glittery butterfly on the shirt, and long blonde hair. She was with her dad. He was eating a hot dog (not foot-long) and she was eating something that looked like popcorn chicken bites. But she was not eating many. She was too busy chasing fireflies.

There weren't many visible. There's way too much light around a Sonic to see them well. But she was completely entranced, jumping into the air and ducking under bushes trying to capture them. I got so caught up in watching her that I stopped eating less than six inches into my foot-long coney.

What is it about fireflies?

To this day, I think they're magic. Do all the research you want, tell me how and why they do what they do, and it won't dim their magic one bit for me.

I think it's because of the memories. Some of my best memories are of fireflies, or "lightning bugs" as we called them.

About this time of year in Southern Kentucky, the fireflies come out. Oh, nowadays there are a few rebels flickering their lonely little lights in early spring, but right about now...mid-June...that's firefly season here. It's also the time of year when it gets too hot in un-air-conditioned houses to enjoy sitting inside in the evenings. I did not grow up with air conditioning.

When I was little, in late May and early June, as the afternoons grew hot and humid, and the evenings grew warm, my dad would go outside after supper, in search of a cool evening breeze and the sound of the tree frogs and crickets, and since I went everywhere with my dad, I went outside too. He'd set up a lawn chair in the middle of the lawn. One of those cheap aluminum-frame chairs with the nylon webbing that lasted a couple of seasons if you were lucky.

Honestly though, the seating quality didn't matter much. We were there for the view. I grew up on a small farm about eight miles south of nowhere. No artificial light except the faint glow from the kitchen window around the side of the house. Quiet.

When my dad got his chair off the porch and headed for the front yard, I'd run into the kitchen and dig under the sink for my jar.

Mine was a Mason jar with a mayonaise lid. Daddy had taken a nail and hammered a few holes in the top for air flow.

Once I had my jar and he had his chair, we were ready for what, to this day, I consider some of the best evenings of my life.

First we'd sit until the last glow of day had faded in the West and the sky had grown dark. The stars flickered on just for us. If we put the chairs right in the middle of the lawn, we had a great view of the Big Dipper almost straight overhead.

Then came the contest--who could spot the first lightning bug in the tall, uncut fescue hay across the road. As the little bugs crawled up the grass from where they'd spent the day hidden, they'd start to flash, one by one. Just a flicker here, and a flicker there.

"There's one!" My dad would say in a loud whisper, then he'd lean forward and point, adding drama to the hunt. He always saw them first. Inborn talent I guess.

Soon though, there would be hundreds, all around, high and low, blinking and streaking across the yard like tiny shooting stars. My dad would hold my jar and keep the lid on real loose for expedient transfer of fireflies from my little-girl hands to the jar. To us, injuring a firefly was a sin almost as grave as the killing of a unicorn is today, in the world of Harry Potter. I'd chase the bugs and catch them ever-so-gently, then I'd run across the dewy grass and my dad would open the lid just a crack. Into the jar they'd crawl. Soon enough I'd have my own lantern.

This lantern was good, of course, only until the first mosquito bit my dad. Then it was time to go in, and the last ritual of the evening was to let the fireflies go.

Tonight I sat at Sonic and ignored my foot-long hot dog as I watched that little girl, and I realized that some magic is timeless. I'm not the only one enchanted by "lightning bugs." Apparantly it's nearly universal. When I googled pictures of fireflies, I found essays, research, pages and pages of photos of the bugs themselves, and even "faux fireflies in jars" with little electric firefly lights, just for effect I guess. Lots of people seem to want to hold onto a bit of the magic.

Catching a jarfull, just to let them go again is one of those things that goes away with make-believe and childhood I suppose. Sometimes I wonder why, as an adult, it's no longer fun to do simple stuff like that.

Nowadays I sit by my firepit with my very adult glass of cabernet, a long way from that dew-covered yard. I know the Latin names of the trees and plants around me, and I have the stresses and worries of an adult in a fast-paced world.

But I can still watch that same Big Dipper sail overhead, and listen to the frogs on the pond behind my house.

And I still go out there early, just so I can try to spot the first firefly.

So tell me, did you ever catch fireflies as a kid?

If you grew up in the city, were there fireflies there?

If you have kids or grandchildren, do they still like to chase the flickering lights?

Apparantly, in some parts of the world, the fireflies all light up at the same time, synchronized, like this picture on the right. Have you ever seen that happen?

What time of year do the fireflies come out where you live?

Do you pay attention, and watch for the first firefly each season? Or am I the only one who still does that?

Stories That They Tell

The stories I’m talking about aren’t the ones we Banditas slave over, trying to decide if “blue” or “cerulean” is the best adjective to describe a heroine’s eyes. The ones where we stare at the computer screen and think “Come on, story, I know you’re there.” The ones that we hope you will one buy from the bookstore.

Nope, today I’m talking about the stories family and friends tell on you. The ones that are told over and over much to your chagrin or occasionally to your amusement and frequently to your embarassment

Now, you have to know that I was a very good child.

{Snickering? Which Bandita is snickering?}

No, really I was. Platinum blonde hair, cerulean blue eyes. See? I was the perfect angel. (Those are too wings on the back!)

Ok. So I wasn’t.

First “Joanie” story told by my mother and capitalized on by my brother.

It seems when my parents brought home their new little bundle of joy aka “The Baby”, 18 month old Joanie didn’t know what to make of it. Who was this squalling kid? Was he staying? Is he looking at MY toys?

Now at 18 months, you’re not usually too verbal but evidently, even at that early age I understood the concept of “Actions speak louder than words.” While my Mom’s back was turned, I proceeded to push this intruder in his carriage into a back room.

Look at my stuffed pink elephant, will ya!

Bro loves to try to make me feel guilty to this day but the sin was compensated for several times over when we were kids. The Christmas that the original Jungle Book movie came out? HE got a cute stuffed Balou bear. Me? I got a stuffed vulture. HE got the nifty red fire engine pedal car while Joanie was the recipient of the sedate brown sedan.

Humph!

Years later he got even. He nabbed my baby doll carriage and filled it with caterpillers. GOBS of caterpillers! Wanted to take them for a ride up and down the driveway.

Humph!

Then there was the tale of my adventures as a 2 year old. My Mom came into the kitchen to find me climbing on the kitchen table. She reacted, telling me to get down immediately. Which I did.

Then I took off running out the front door, Mom hot on my heels. The whole way I was yelling “Don’t hit me anymore!” She said “I hadn’t laid a hand on you but when I finally caught you (in the field across the street) I took care of that!” I must have been part Billy goat because I recall another table climbing incident only this time I fell off and smacked my head on the concrete floor of our basement. I clearly remember driving to the ER (ahem, they didn’t HAVE 911 then) of our Catholic hospital where I thought it odd that a nun was x-raying me.

So what about you? What stories do your family and friends delight in torturing you with? What was the oddest toy you got as a child? Did you torture your siblings?


(To the left is a snapshot of one of the rare moments my Mom could catch me, LOL.)