Tubtime

[Martin Hash]

I know it sounds very odd but I do a lot of work in the bathtub. Hermits have their caves, and wise men have their mountaintops, but I have a small enclosed space, residual feeling of a womb, and the sound of running water to isolate me from the real world, making me the King of Tubland. I look forward to getting up in the morning because the warmth & comfort of the bathtub beckons me. In fact, if I don't get a morning bath, the day seems out of sync because I do a lot of work in the bathtub. When my kids were young, they would dance around in the bathroom singing, “Tubtime! Tubtime! Tubtime!” and as adults, they're all bathtub people too.

I do a lot of work in the bathtub. At home I've built a computer shelf for my bathtub, and there's a foam stadium cushion I sit on to keep from getting tingly legs. When I'm traveling, I put my computer on the toilet seat if it is close enough, and I carry a plug in my luggage because even if there is a bathtub, no one has used it in years and closing the drain doesn't work. Often I have to use a washrag that I hold down with the heel of my foot while I type on the computer.

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We travel overseas a lot and bathtubs, unfortunately, are an American phenomenon; most places in the world just have a shower. Now if the shower pan sides are high enough, I can make do, I only need 6 inches of water, and any kind of bathtub is better than no bathtub. I have squeezed myself into tiny bathtubs not made for humans, and I suspect some of those things I used as a bathtub weren't really bathtubs. In one hotel, the wall between the bedroom and the bathroom was made of glass, and I was clearly visible to other people in the room while sitting in the bathtub. I felt like an aquarium fish, but it didn't stop me.

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I have gone to great lengths to make broken bathtubs functional. While my wife, Gwynne & I, lived in Newcastle, England, the bathtub faucet would no longer work so I found an old vacuum cleaner hose and strung it from the sink tap and turned it on before getting in. For the first few days all kinds of crud came out of that hose but after a while I got used to it and it was like that for months. The rest of the flat was just as bad but as long as the bathtub worked, I was okay with it. Nothing is quite so important for a comfortable life as a bathtub; actually, Gwynne agrees with me that bathtubs are probably the secret of my success.

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[DrYouth]

How about rubber duckies?

[de officiis]

Water and computers: a dangerous combination.

[Fife]

Water and computers: a dangerous combination.

I adore bathtubs.