Bath time saddness

I am kind of addicted to taking baths. 

Late in the evening, after the toys are put in their box and the flurry of books that covers our living room floor are lined up on their shelf....this is when it happens.  Our tiny little house is so quiet and filling up the bathtub gets the tiniest bathroom dense with steam.  

Readiness goes like this: 

- gather reading material (the latest Sunset magazine is my preference, otherwise a book will do)

- turn the baby monitor toward the bathroom so I can see the munchkin from the tub

- pull my hair up, way up, onto my head to avoid getting it wet

- get my cell phone and place it on the sink in case the hubby calls

Then it's time!!  I like my water just a little bit too hot.  The kind of hot where you have to enter slowly and you end up with half a red body where your skin was under the water.  This is my favorite part.  I love feeling the super warmth and the tingle as my cold skin is shocked into the hotness and for a minute or two I just lay there.  

If I could have just that moment of bath time I would be happy.  The rest is just a slow death of hot bath water.  Everything after that point is my body getting acclimated and, eventually, too hot.  So I pass the time reading and bending my legs in and out of the water (us taller folk don't fit all the way into the tub all at once). In all truthfulness the whole experience lasts about 15 minutes, but I really love it.   

Do you ever sit in the tub as the water drains?  It's a funny feeling.  I imagine being an astronaut, coming back into the earth's atmosphere and losing my 'floatiness'.  As the water sinks lower, my body feels heavier and the weight of my legs presses by into my knees until eventually I am lying like a dead octopus, all collapsed, limp and heavy in the bottom of the tub.

And then I'm sad.  All that water, all that energy to heat it up for such a small bit of happiness.  It does take awhile for the heat to wear off though.  I can usually go a few hours before I am no longer self-heating.  Jazzy Belle likes bath time too.  She gets herself all cozy on the bath mat and glances at me lazily every so often.  She's not a fan of me dripping on her when I get out though.