(NKC emailed with a special request for me to post (Cafferty too, I'm not the only slacker). I'm so boring lately that I don't really have much. This will have to do, unless you want me to take pictures of my Christmas decorations, which are pretty darn good if you ask me!)
I often think I need a more exciting life, then I would have more to blog about. I once lived in London, which sounds exciting, but really it was much like my life here, only less convenient. I recently came across a new blog which I already love. Mainly because he updates alot (unlike some me's). The author lives in Paris, which certainly sounds exciting, and gives him lots of blog material. He has one post that reminded me of something I had nearly forgotten about in London. If you skip down to the section on French showers, I've had almost the exact same experience.
I lived in a wonderful house in central London, with 3 friends, all American, and all working for the “E”mpire. It was really a fantastic experience, right up to the point I got abandoned in London by my company, but that’s another post. This post is about the bathroom the girls in the house shared. In all my time in London, I really never discussed the shower situation, mainly because I thought I was just too dumb to figure it out, and I didn’t want my super smart roommates to discover what a fraud I was. Reading this blog posting though, made me realize I’m not alone. Picture a bathtub, with no shower curtain, and no shower head. Just a hose. And no method for attaching it to the wall, shower head style. I experimented with a variety of methods for bathing in this set up. I tried standing up, but felt completely ridiculous. Plus, as the blog points out, it was a sure fire way to soak the entire bathroom, or freeze your tuchus off as there was no way to both cover your body with the spray and contain it in the bathtub. And there was the whole shortage of hands issue. How do you open the shampoo, squeeze, and apply to hair all with one hand? It's not possible, trust me. The only option in the standing method was to turn the water on and off, which quickly turned my shower into a 20 minute battle of absurdity. The only feasible option I discovered was sitting down in the bathtub, and utilizing my legs to hold the shower head while shampooing or soaping up. It was ridiculous. There is something about sitting in an empty bathtub that is so …humbling…mortifying….ridiculous? (I’m struggling for the proper adjective here, but just give it a whirl once in your own bathroom, and maybe the appropriate word will pop into your head. Let me know how that turns out for you.) Not to mention, it was still pretty chilly, as its not really possible to be covered by the water while sitting. Plus there was more than one occasion where the shower head got away from me and ended up soaking the entire room, and ruining entire rolls of toilet paper at a time. And no, a full-on bath, while tempting for warmth purposes, was not an option. I never feel clean after one, and can you really wash your hair effectively that way? Anyway, just as I was resigning myself to the system, I was asked to leave the country. I haven’t thought about it much since then, but it’s funny to me that I just assumed I was the only one who couldn’t figure this out. In my mind it was one of those logic games that they ask you in interviews and if I thought about it long enough I would figure out how to get the chicken, the fox, AND the bag of grain across the river. And if you ask for help, they will kick you out of the country. Oh wait, they did that anyway.
I lived in a wonderful house in central London, with 3 friends, all American, and all working for the “E”mpire. It was really a fantastic experience, right up to the point I got abandoned in London by my company, but that’s another post. This post is about the bathroom the girls in the house shared. In all my time in London, I really never discussed the shower situation, mainly because I thought I was just too dumb to figure it out, and I didn’t want my super smart roommates to discover what a fraud I was. Reading this blog posting though, made me realize I’m not alone. Picture a bathtub, with no shower curtain, and no shower head. Just a hose. And no method for attaching it to the wall, shower head style. I experimented with a variety of methods for bathing in this set up. I tried standing up, but felt completely ridiculous. Plus, as the blog points out, it was a sure fire way to soak the entire bathroom, or freeze your tuchus off as there was no way to both cover your body with the spray and contain it in the bathtub. And there was the whole shortage of hands issue. How do you open the shampoo, squeeze, and apply to hair all with one hand? It's not possible, trust me. The only option in the standing method was to turn the water on and off, which quickly turned my shower into a 20 minute battle of absurdity. The only feasible option I discovered was sitting down in the bathtub, and utilizing my legs to hold the shower head while shampooing or soaping up. It was ridiculous. There is something about sitting in an empty bathtub that is so …humbling…mortifying….ridiculous? (I’m struggling for the proper adjective here, but just give it a whirl once in your own bathroom, and maybe the appropriate word will pop into your head. Let me know how that turns out for you.) Not to mention, it was still pretty chilly, as its not really possible to be covered by the water while sitting. Plus there was more than one occasion where the shower head got away from me and ended up soaking the entire room, and ruining entire rolls of toilet paper at a time. And no, a full-on bath, while tempting for warmth purposes, was not an option. I never feel clean after one, and can you really wash your hair effectively that way? Anyway, just as I was resigning myself to the system, I was asked to leave the country. I haven’t thought about it much since then, but it’s funny to me that I just assumed I was the only one who couldn’t figure this out. In my mind it was one of those logic games that they ask you in interviews and if I thought about it long enough I would figure out how to get the chicken, the fox, AND the bag of grain across the river. And if you ask for help, they will kick you out of the country. Oh wait, they did that anyway.
The one with the blue door was my house. Yes, I would describe this as "wonderful" compared to what many of my friends lived in!
2 comments:
The picture of the french bathroom was very similar to a bathroom in a room at a "hotel" I stayed at in Thailand. The shower was a hose on the wall. There was no way to contain the water just a drain in the middle of the bathroom right next to the sink and potty. I still feel dirty.
thanks P!!! that is a hysterical story!!!
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