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2005-08-19 - 11:22 a.m.

Seems it never rains in Southern California
Seems I've often heard that kind of talk before
It never rains in California
But girl, don't they warn ya
It pours man it pours ~ Albert Hammond

Last night I attempted to revisit my past contentment found immersed in hot water surrounded by soft white bubbles. First of all the task of locating bubblebath proved to be quite a challenge. The days of Calgon are gone it seems, what an awful tragedy. Of course I was at the grocery store which has probably abandoned such frivolous items due in large part to the many specialty stores catering to the higher end sorts looking to spend twenty-five dollars to �pamper� themselves. I miss the times when for two fifty you could soak your cares away. Once I finally located the one and only option I headed home anticipating an evening of candlelight and comfort.

After dinner I checked my e-mail before setting up the guest bath (the master bath has a shower, go figure) for my experience. My Darling obliged me with a silent house opting for an evening spent searching the internet for more information on improving the performance of his truck (I like fixing cars but I will never understand man�s obsession with horsepower). There are no windows in the bathroom so the stage was set for a completely relaxing peaceful evening with no interruptions from the outside world.

I collected several candles and after searching the house for a lighter (when I smoked there was always one close at hand but now the single lighter in our home was not in it�s normal place and so it took some doing to locate it) I light the tea candles and run hot water into the tub. I pour too much foaming milk bath (fancy for bubble bath) into the filling tub and wait expectantly for the water (and bubbles) to rise high enough for me to begin my experiment in sensory deprivation for the purpose of spiritual stillness. What follows is a comedy of errors that did more to annoy than unwind.

The bathtub in my new home is wedged into a space just large enough for the tub itself which means there is no comfortable place to lay your head. The slope of the tub would be comfortable if there were four or five inches beyond the edge of the tub in which to rest your head but instead the wall butts up to the tub edge forcing ones head into an awkward vertical position and pressing the chin down into the breast bone. This uncomfortable position of the neck might be eased with a �bath pillow� but that would force me into one of those smelly specialty shops where young girls with seamless faces chase me around trying to sell me products designed to help me hold on to my waning youthful appearance (yeah, NO). This particular tub isn�t terribly deep either (or perhaps I have simply thickened to the point that any tub would not be deep enough for my bulk) so I had difficultly submerging myself in the extremely hot water. Once I was able to find an almost comfortable position the overflow suddenly took over and siphoned a considerable amount of water from the already shallow pool forcing me to add more hot water. My imagined poor mans isolation chamber had turned into a battle between myself, the overflow and the drain plug which I managed to release twice during the botched bathing experiment. After gaining control over the draining devices I attempted several less than comfortable positions before I finally settled on my feet and legs above water while my torso and head were partially submerged (I could sometimes completely submerge if I held my breath but parts of me kept creeping above the waterline). Then for one brief moment I felt the calm I remembered settle over me and I listened to my blood pounding in my ear drums blissfully unaware of anything else in the world. It was almost womblike if you don�t count the limbs awkwardly protruding from my watery womb. At that moment the overflow kicked in and once again the water was removed from the tub at an alarming rate and no amount of shifting from that point on could produce submersion.

I finally gave up and indulged in a hot shower while the remains of my �isolation chamber� swirled down the drain. Afterwards, as I lay on my bed listening to my heart pound, my system working to return my body temperature to normal, I wondered if I will ever find a way to turn off the buzzing in my head. That�s when it hits me. I can�t even sit out in the rain because it never rains in Southern California. *Sigh*

Still searching for peace and stillness.

I wish you Peace

~alison~


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- - 2013-08-16

Darkness - 2013-04-18

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