The realities of a bath are far from relaxing... as Maria Rushe discovers in this hilarious account.
‘Make some time for YOU Mammy and have a relaxing bath’ say the instafluencers.
Well OK then!
An instaworthy bathing relaxation event is about to go down in Chez Mammy… buckle up Bitcheepoos.
I sniff in the steam as my very ‘spensive and much loved bubble bath, (made up of ingredients I cannot pronounce for lack of vowels… LangyLang and mystical howabajobawobahoohoo berries and Blossoms and such) fills my bathroom with sweet scented steam.
I need this.
I deserve this.
I shall read.
I shall RELAX and have some time ON MY OWN.
I have the suds.
I have the soaps.
I have the candles lit.
I have my book ready.
I have my musical soundtracks ready to play.
Most importantly, I have the wine poured.
I EVEN have a few nice big dirty fat creamy chocolates sitting on my the fancy board that sits across my bath, (which I decided that I NEEDED on night 309 of lockdown after a bath where I almost smashed my favourite wine glass into my thighs as it refused to balance on the side of the bath.)
I am going to sip on my Shiraz and listen to Idina Defy Gravity, while I hum along, calm and content and soaking my cares away.
I switch off the ‘big light’ and slide into the suds.
It’s too hot. Of course it is.
It will ALWAYS be too hot, for I am a muppet. I’ll never learn.
That’s a fact.
Deciding that the chances of ACTUAL burns are not quite as high as usual, I wait for my skin to stop screaming and close my eyes.
This shall be heaven.
I insist it shall.
I reach for my book…
I cannot see my book.
For you see, the romantic and subtle candlelight is SO subtle that I actually can’t SEE any of the words on the fecking page.
I call Himself.
“Will you turn on the big light please? I can’t see!”
He grumbles something rather dangerous and foolish about how he “told me so” and the light dazzles me.
Ok, so it’s not quite as relaxing, but at least I can see the words now. I balance the book in my soggy hands.
Within a few moments, the steam is causing my fingers to leave big damp splodges all over the pages.
It seems that the book is gaining weight. I’m sure it wasn’t this heavy 5 minutes ago.
It seems to have morphed into the entire collection of the Britannica Encyclopedia and I’m wondering HOW it now weighs 25Kg as my arms struggle to hold the fecking soggy pages above my head. This is so uncomfortable.
I put the book down, hit play on the phone and listen to the Wicked soundtrack.
As I pop a chocolate into my mouth, the WIFI cuts out (I’m more than a metre from the bloody kitchen. What did I expect?) so the music stops and starts so many times within a minute that I think I have whiplash.
I switch off Idina and throw another chocolate into my mouth…
Or AT my mouth, for, you see, I miss.
And the dirty big champagne truffle sinks like yer man Jack in Titanic and I think I cry louder and more genuinely than Rose.
Such is the severity of my sense of loss. I fish the little fecker out, but not before it has started to melt, because yes, the water is still too hot.
I plop the sodden truffle onto the fancy board. It looks like a poo.
Then I call the Husband again to come down to open the window, because obviously I am still melting and my heart is working too hard in the boiling water and I fear that I may die.
“What now?”
“Can you open the window please?”
There are grumblings and mutterings as he opens the window. He eyes the tiny poo on the board and the suspicious trail of pooey clouds in the water and raises an eyebrow at me, before leaving me to my ‘pampering’…
I hear the words “Every frickin time…” as he stomps out to continue wrestling the two hellfiends into their beds.
‘This is SOOO relaxing’ I think as I listen to them announce to Daddy that actually, it is NOT bedtime and they are in fact NOT going to bed until Mammy reads a story…
The wine is lovely…just the right temperature. I allow the berry-red joyjuice to do that weird tingle it does to my muscles. It’s rather lovely.
I set it the glass back and close my eyes because the big light is by now fecking blinding me, and I try that ‘relaxing’ thing people talk about.
After approximately 2 minutes, I’m bored.
The door opens and I hear her before I see her.
She is settling her tiny self on the toilet and as she does so, she announces “you might want to cover your nose Mammy.”
Noooooooooo!
Well. You can imagine how the rest of this story goes…
Yeah.
Have a bath they said.
It’s so relaxing…
Lying bitches.
The Author
