The Mythos of the Garden Tub

I've been kind of down the past few days and I'm not sure why. Hormones maybe? Latent grief from the 6/30 anniversary maybe. Maybe it's because I haven't worked out in days and I'm building up all that stress and tension that normally gets let out on my Total Gym. I'm unsure. What I do know is that the more I'm thinking on it and examining it the more down I'm getting, the more frustrated I'm getting so as of yesterday I decided fuck it, I'll just be down for however long this is going to be. No big deal. No one died, I've not been wronged, hormonally speaking though I'm not in my happy place.
My husband told me yesterday I should go take a bath in our tub. This is truly some sort of recipe for ultimate bliss. I bought my house BECAUSE of the tub I swear to you. This tub is so big that I have, at some points in my parenting, been able to put FOUR children in it comfortably. Then it was three, then two. I'm down to one at a time now but still, it's a damn big tub. You could join me. We've have our feet all up in each other's business but you definitely COULD join me.

When I think of my tub, I think of this...

Of course, it doesn't look anything like that. Mine is 25+ years old, and the jets don't work anymore and it needs regrouted around the tile. I'm surrounded by this hideous faux victorian wallpaper, which looks a bit like this...

the main difference therein being that the one I grabbed to show you is sort of pretty and the one in my bathroom is like the Fingerhut version of that same print. NOT delicate and lovely, in other words.

The other important thing about my amazing garden tub, the one for which I bought an entire house is this - I never use it. Months, years go by, and I never get into the thing. There aren't enough hours in the day to do all of the things I want to do. I want to get into my tub and luxuriate but I never do, so my husband's suggestion of a long hot bath to help soak away my blues seemed like an amazing suggestion. We added a glass of wine to complete the relaxation and I felt like I was in heaven.

You might think maybe I would look like this...

Well that would be how I look in my mind.

You see, I don't have proper wine glasses unpacked (yes I've lived here seven years leave me alone I'll get to it). What I DO have are some snowman printed goblets from when my brother and SIL came down for Thanksgiving the VERY first year I lived in Atlanta (which was awesome btw guys). In my snowman printed goblet, I pour a liberal amount of  fruity blackberry merlot because life is not too short to drink cheap wine.

There I recline, in a huge tub filled with epsom salts (I was thinking these might soak out the poisons in my mind), and a snowman goblet filled with a wine that makes my tongue tingle.  The door is closed and the water is steamy, and I lay back and let the smell of pink peony and rose oil surround me and just try to think calm things.

Crash conk blonk "Don't BOTHER MOM!" I hear. I like to try to deciper the sounds from behind the door of my refuge. I hear toys being dug for in a toy box, I hear stomping (Miles is into stomping), I hear laughter. I submerge and listen to the same sounds from underwater, indecipherable now, like messages from a distant planet.

I slather on No7 Cleaning gel oil which by the way is the best stuff ever for this 46 year old face, it says it's for dry skin but I think it's a miracle product for 40 year old faces. It also has some magical property apparently, according to it's label it goes on as a thick gel, turns into an oil and then turns into a milk. That's got to be some serious science going on there, or magic. I'm not sure which.

I soak in the magic of the body wash that says it's got pink peony and rose oil, I turn it over and can't find pink peony anywhere on the ingredients. I can't find any latin words that would BE pink peony if I looked them up. There are a lot of isosomethingorother ingredients and sodium laurthorsomething. I do find rose oil about half way down so I've only been HALF lied to and I feel better about this. I feel like Tone body wash has lied to me, though, and I'm mentally shaking my fist at them.

I slather kids shampoo on, and gaze around the room, I'm not surrounded by candles and potpourri, I'm surrounded by laundry that needs pre-stained and sorted. Two kids in diapers at age 11 mean a lot of clothes need extra work before the washer, and there isn't anything to be done by lay it out the best place possible - my huge ass tub's ledge is perfect.

Some people always have such elegant shit going on with their towels. I wouldn't know how to begin to have such an array of fine towels around me. Maybe that's 12 years of mom mentality. I've got the big rack made to hold your huge fluffy bath towels, it's got a single hand towel tossed over it. Over the stand up shower that doesn't work there are the bath towels draped so that they can dry properly. The ninja turtles, Sophia the First, and Lightning McQueen are all represented. On the peg hook Spiderman is represented.

I've chosen Lightning McQueen and Spiderman as my towels today, with my floor towel being a lovely towel that used to be a deep rose color my mom mother purchased at Sears about 30 years ago when she did a spruce up to my Grandmother's bathroom. These towels were SO lovely and fluffy when new that my Grandmother proclaimed them too good to use and promptly folded them and put them away in the cabinet. She gave them to me in their pristine conditions when I moved out on my own in the 1990s.

I finish my second glass of wine and submerge, realizing that I'm underwater, have had two glasses of wine and this is how people suddenly pass out and drown and it'll be a headline "Mother of four drowns in freak accident outside Atlanta" so I come up for air and just lay back in the hot flowery water.

I don't know what's wrong with me, maybe sometimes it's just ok to feel like this "everything is too much" and in a few days I won't feel like that at all. I can honestly say that this morning I don't actually feel like that, I can feel stress glimmering on the edges of my mind but I don't feel it right now. I'm drinking coffee with cream and sugar waistline be damned it's what I want.

Part of me wonders though, waking up on this Sunday, if the 45 minutes of soaking did help part of that fade away? Epsom salts are weird things, allegedly this is true:
 Epsom salt has beneficial properties that can soothe the body, mind and soul. Some of the countless health benefits include relaxing the nervous system, curing skin problems, soothing back pain and aching limbs, easing muscle strain, healing cuts, treating cold and congestion, and drawing toxins from the body

Maybe it's true, because very oddly I do feel better. In fact, I think I'm going to have another coffee. With cream AND sugar. Carpe Diem! Because I only say YOLO when I'm being ironic and it's just too early for that, folks.
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