Saturday, September 27, 2014

No bath for me, thank you very much!

I like baths.  I know that some people are only shower people, but I love a bath for many reasons.  When we bought our 2nd house in North Carolina it had a tiny “garden tub” in it and Russ took one look at it and said well that will have to go, won’t it!  (We put in the best tub ever several years later.)

Our house here has a decent sized tub.  It’s not quite as long as I would like, but on the plus size it seems to be cast iron which means that it really keeps the water hot longer.  That is great.  It also has jets.  I’m not really a jetted tub person, so that’s not so great for me.  I understand the theory behind the idea, but in my experience in the small space of a bathtub the jetted water is usually more abrasive than comfortable so I rarely use them.

A few nights ago I was getting ready for bed and noticed a good sized spider in the bathtub.  I asked Russ to come in and get it for me (longer arms, braver spirit) and he did and that was that.

This morning as I was getting ready for the day I was trying to open a bottle of nose drops and I couldn’t get the tight plastic wrapping off.  I grabbed a new pair of hair cutting scissors to help me and jabbed at the plastic with one tip.  Clearly that was a bad decision, because almost immediately the tip slipped from the plastic and right onto my finger, slicing the side of my middle finger from the 1st joint almost to the top.  Boy did that hurt.

A little while ago I decided that I really needed to wash my hair.  I didn’t want to shower because of my cut finger, so I decided I would take a bath instead.  I reasoned that it would be much easier to get my hair wet without wetting my cut finger, and that I’d just wash my hair with one hand.  Plus it was still chilly in the house and I thought it was definitely a good moment for the first bath of the season.  The bathtub was dusty after not being used during the summer and had a dead fly in it and some other bits & pieces of who knows what.  I got a cleaning wipe and cleaned it all out, then rinsed it out as well.  Then I started running hot water into it.

I wasn’t watching while the water ran, and after a few minutes I came back over to turn on some cold water and to see how much more it needed.  I was surprised when I looked at the water intake for the jets.  (the cream colored thing in the picture below.)  IMG_2005

Just above the top of the water intake there was a small spider.  I was grabbing a tissue to kill the spider and get on with the important business of bathing when this little thought occurred inside my head.

You know how there was that bigger spider in the bathtub earlier this week?  And now there’s this little spider?  What if there are BABY SPIDERS IN THERE???

That thought filled me with alarm, because I can think of few things worse than laying naked in a bathtub filled with both water and spiders.  I grabbed a glass from the counter and figured I’d pour a few cupfulls through and make sure there were no more spiders. 

I scooped up a cup, then poured it over the water intake.

And then SCREAMED!

Because a BIG spider, with a fat body and thick legs, positively JUMPED out of the top of the water intake!

Now you could be tempted to think that I was exaggerating, but don’t.  Russ will back me up on this.  Because after Jared told him that mom was screaming in the bathroom and he finally came to see what was wrong, he saw the spider (all shriveled up) floating around in the tub.  He picked up the glass to scoop the spider out and flush it down the toilet, but as he scooped the spider once again JUMPED and jumped out of the water and back onto the top of the water intake.  I will confess to screaming again, just a little startled scream.

He poured water on the spider again to subdue it, and then successfully scooped it out and flushed it down the toilet. 

And me?  Well you could not have paid me to have a bath at that point.  I poured more water (over and over) into the water intake, put more cold water in the tub till there was enough to run the jets, and turned them on.  I figured if there was ANYTHING in that system I wanted it flushed out.  BEFORE the start of bathtub season.

Today, I think I will have a shower.  Winking smile

3 comments:

  1. Oh, man! I really don't like spiders, either.

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  2. Haha!!! Catching up on blog posts and I'm so very happy this is the first one I read this morning. :)

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