Unable to Adult
I may have just turned 39, but there’s still much I have to learn about adulting.
This week I actually gave myself a massive pat on the back for hoovering the stairs and for managing to take the cushions off the sofa in order to vacuum underneath them. What with owning a red setter, it can end up feeling like a family of orangutans have nested in there. So, having hoovered until I was sweating like I was indeed in the jungle, I felt I was doing OK with being an adult.
Until I decided to run myself a bath. It’s true to say that I’m more of a shower person, so baths are rare and tend to occur only if I’m feeling really cold, or if I feel like I’ve earned some pampering. Which I clearly did, having actually used some of the extra utensil heads on the hoover. Frankly, I deserved a medal as well as a candlelit, bubbly soak, but I’ve no idea how to claim that. If you’ve any idea, please let me know so I can get one and show it to Mum.
One of my friends purports to bathing two to four times a day. Aside from the environmental questions this raises about waste, I am baffled as to how this is either pleasurable or necessary.
If I’ve taken the time to run a bath (which is likely to involve rinsing the bath out first), I’m jolly well going to make the most of it. I’m settling in for the night. I bring books, music, my phone, a cup of tea, and possibly a glass of gin, into the ‘bathing zone’. In fact, on this occasion I even brought my entire repertoire of vocal sheet music. I was putting on a show. Which means I’m going to be in there for at least an hour. More likely two.
So the idea of having up to four bubble baths a day seems, to me, akin to writing off half the day – possibly more if there’s food to hand. How does he ever get any work done?
That said, perhaps I need to take a leaf from his book, because I clearly need practice at drawing a bath. It doesn’t matter what I do, or how many times I check it, by the time I tentatively creep that first foot into the water, the temperature is either disappointingly tepid, or the heat of molten lava. There is no in between. On this occasion I feared my foot had actually blistered.
Now naked and goosepimply, I was forced into bouncing around to try to keep warm (and also to avoid spending too long treading on the one foot that was on fire) while I added more cold to the bath.
This is usually the point at which Charlie, the Setter, shakes his head forlornly at me and lollops downstairs to shed his hair all over the sofa. His Mum doing a naked, howling dance around the bathroom is too much for even the most loyal of companions. I really can’t blame him. Perhaps I should stick to hoovering.
Oh, who am I kidding? I’ve probably bothered to remove the sofa cushions a total of 5 times since I moved in two years ago. I should just give up adulting completely. You can keep your medals, as long as I can keep the gin.