Sugar Cube Shower

I’m sure this will be a surprise to most of you, but showering is a high risk activity.

 

Confused? Shower regularly yourself with no injuries? Just wait.

 

I’m privileged right now to be at a little chalet with a few girlfriends. It is bliss – I slept until 7:45 a.m. without a single interruption, as the gals I’m with are in their 30s and have mastered self-soothing, potty-training, and getting drinks of water without assistance.

 

After I woke up, stretching blissfully and yawning with abandon, I headed to the shower.

 

It is the size of a sugar cube – but that sugar cube is still filled with sweetness because I anticipated time with me and the water, no requests to join me, get breakfast ready, or random doors opening to let all the wonderfulness of warm steam dissipate out into the cold, cruel world of the house.

 

The shower was lovely.

 

But I made a strategic error. I tried to shave my legs.

 

This is not a wise idea if you’re scrunched in a sugar cube and you haven’t gotten a clear sight-line to your toes in a few weeks because your stomach is housing an alien with your genetic code.

 

At home, we have a tub/shower combo unit. On the rare occasion I feel all sassy and confident and decide to break out the razor I am able to casually prop my foot on the edge of the tub and scrape away.

 

Not so much in this shower. I’m not sure it’s so sweet.

 

In order to reach my leg in the teensy, tiny shower, I had to brace my back against the far side of the shower and hike my toes up to eyebrow-level on the opposite side of the shower.

 

I pulled tendons and ligaments and taffy and all sorts of other things that shouldn’t be messed with in a slippery, dangerous environment like a wicked sugar cube.

 

(But I did shave my legs. Both of them. Victory.)

 

Did I mention getting my toes down from the eye level was also a task of Herculean effort? It seems once you are able to get your body into position, the lesser-limberly gifted folks have difficult with freezing in said positions.

 

Ei-yi-yi.

 

Crippled, hunched over, and limping one step at a time from side-to-side in that awful sugar cube of a shower, I decided it was time to call it quits. Since there was no bath mat, I decided to simply turn the shower off while I was still a resident.

 

I confronted the Hot and Cold water knobs. Couldn’t remember for sure which way I needed to turn them.

 

I made the wrong choice. HOT, HOT, HOT!!!

 

I considered yelping and running, but I couldn’t move quickly because my legs were broken from the shaving exercise. I couldn’t get out of the water because the sugar cube was maliciously trapping me within the stream.

 

As I frantically turned the knobs one way, then another, I ended up in freezing water, chilled to perfection by snow melt and ice cube elves working hard, deep down in the aquifer.

 

I decided it was better to sacrifice the flooring than my body and bolted from the shower, calling on survival instinct and adrenaline!

 

From the dripping comfort of the big, wide world outside the sugar cube shower, I considered calling my friends for back up since I couldn’t figure out how to turn the stupid sugar cubed shower off.

 

Then, I reconsidered.

 

I’m an educated woman with three decades of experience in life. I will not be buffaloed by a sugar cube shower!

 

I took a deep breath and experimented, finally figuring it out. The shower is off. I am dry. I have no scald or freezer burns on my body.

 

Yet I still can’t walk upright.

 

This is why moms don’t shower regularly. It’s a dangerous activity!

 

Have you ever been injured by a common task?