My son’s picture of the hot tub from hell
If I say that I spent the day in a hot tub, does that conjure for you an image of decadence, pampering and relaxation? Do you think of lazing beneath the sunlit blue of a warm spring sky, champagne, perhaps, in hand?
Or perhaps the aching body is allowed to bask blissfully in the warm and healing fragrant steam, washing away the stiffness, gently massaging the tension and soothing a tired frame?
A tempting image…. but think again.
“I’m going to get the hot tub back in service, Mum.” This ‘I’ business was purely rhetorical… we both knew what that meant. Groans from the house hobbit….this thing is the size of my bathroom.
I shouldn’t complain. It has been decommissioned for a long time now and I have been able to ignore the thing. It was originally installed to serve a particular and necessary purpose as part of my son’s recovery, restoring the damaged circulation and providing a deep massage… purely therapeutic. Honest.
The beer fridge beside the hot tub is only used to hold only water and as his musical tastes have mellowed from Eminem to Mozart, neither the wildlife or the neighbours would mind the thing being put back into service.
Even so, recommissioning it was not something I was looking forward to. I managed to stave off the task for a few days, called in the cavalry to remove the resident slug population and braced myself for the inevitable.
I had awoken particularly stiff from chasing the dog the night before. My own fault. Serves me right. I should, at the very least, have used the extending leash, but as ‘her’ lawn is dangerously full of fissures big enough to engulf my legs, let alone hers, I knew she would want a run. I just hadn’t reckoned on that long a run or the involvement of a rabbit. So I was already a tad worse for wear when I wandered stiffly down to my son’s.
The sun was already hammering the back garden. It was going to be a long day. I had refilled the tub when the engineer came to fit a new motor, so it needed draining, cleaning and refilling. It takes three hours to fill and as long again to empty. The slugs had moved back in, two years of grime needed scrubbing and weird wiggly things lurked behind the headrests. I did the only reasonable thing I could, apart from telling him what he could do with his hot tub… I set up the pressure washer.
Within minutes, I was dripping, wearing several gallons of water and watching the stuff squelch out of my now sodden shoes. I blasted everything in sight, rescued as many creatures as I could and blasted some more.
My son, perversely, chose this point to be concerned about me. Not so much for my wellbeing as my sanity. Asking if I had ever heard of the concept of growing old gracefully. I assured him I had, but had discarded the notion in favour of ageing disgracefully. Seeing no reason why such insanity should not be hereditary, I passed him the cleaning cloth and sent him in.
To be fair, I did expect him to strip to his swim shorts first…the sight of him in there fully clothed and wielding a dishcloth is not one I will forget in a hurry. While I wrestled with the filters and scrubbed the jets and waterfalls, he scrubbed the sides and rescued snails. It took us nine hours of solid hard labour before we finally set about the task of remembering how the control panel worked. That was the one thing we got wrong, so it was a full twenty-four hours before he could get in, relax and congratulate himself on a job well done.
Next day, I could barely move. By the time the hot tub was warm and working, I could move even less and was hobbling around, groaning with every attempt at movement and failing miserably to turn my head even a little. Said my son, with unconscious irony, “You should use the hot tub, Mum. It would do you the world of good…”
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
Oh, he is a silly one 😂. I hope you did use the tub and are feeling a bit better
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I did, Dorinda… and have every intention of doing so again 😉
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Sounds grand! Enjoy!!
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I will 🙂
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Oh Sue! I hope you actually did use it!!!
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I did…and will do so again 😉
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I may come and join you.. those hours sitting in that hospital chair and then the subsequent three hour journeys back and forth have done nothing good for my back!!
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It would probably do you the world of good too x
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And to add… 5 hours in the car today. Only just arrived in Brummafter leaving at 10!
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Good grief, you must ache like anything!
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Just a tad 🙂
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Reblogged this on anita dawes and jaye marie.
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Thanks for sharing, Jaye x
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Well, look on the bright side: at least you now get to use it too.
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I’m just hoping that wasn’t a one-off 🙂
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LOL!
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At least there was an upside to this job! Enjoy!
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I did…and hope I will again 🙂
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Grrrrrrrrr! sons! Got to love them though 💜🙃
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Love? Yes. Like? That depends 😉 x
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Yes the like is hard sometimes 🌹
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Not really… but we like to let them think so 😉
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Keep them on their metaphorical toes! 💜
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Always the best way 😉
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🌹😀
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Yikes Sue! But well done! Your turn now to bath and bask! Hope the aches become a thing of the past pretty soon.
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Thanks, Susan. I think most of the aches are permanent residents these days 🙂
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OMG! Poor you! I hope your son enjoys his hot tub … and appreciates your hard work. 🙂
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More to the point, I hope I am allowed to enjoy his hot tub 😉
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Well done, mum!! I’m sure he appreciated it. Love his sense of humour!!
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The problem is, he was serious 😉
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At the very least, you should enjoy the fruit of your labor!
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I did…eventually 😉
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We had a BIG hot tub for 15 years and finally decommissioned it and passed it on to another family. It was the electric bill that got us eventually. We kept it — appropriately — outside but under the deck. It was lovely sitting in the hot tub watching the snow fall. The extra $40 a month of electricity was not so lovely. After a while, it got hard for me to lift the top of the tub — and I was the primary user. It felt really good on a sore back, but the upkeep was a big deal. To use the non-chemical stuff (better for the earth) or the chemical stuff (more effective and lasts longer). Just filling it was a big deal too because we live using a well.
We actually emptied our entire well when we first filled it. We learned better, after that. IIt took three days to fill it.
I know exactly how much work goes into just the annual emptying and refilling — and when it has been out of use for a while? I’m surprised you got it to work. They often refuse to work after fully drying out. They can be fixed, but they really don’t like being allowed to dry.
Congratulations on getting the job done. You deserve a peaceful half hour letting your muscles be grateful for the heat!
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This one is a big one too… four different massage stations and a lounger… and it was the electric bill that put it out of action.
Nick also looked at getting rid of it, but the trees have grown so much it would have cost thousands for a crane company to get it out, so it was use it or let it rot… and it is too expensive for that.
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Being first in the hot tub immediately after recommissioning needed to have been your price for such a task! 😀 … bravo on a job well done though. 😀
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I never thought of that… I’ll remember for future reference 😉
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I’ve often thought it would be nice to have a hot tub or even a swimming pool, but I don’t think I could cope with all the hard work involved in maintaining them.
I love the picture of the hot tub from hell! 😀
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I’d love a pool…but in England? It barely seems worth it. Most days there is enough water in the atmosphere 😉
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After the dust settled (pun intended) I hope it was worth the effort and enjoyable.
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It was, Jennie…eventually 🙂
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😀
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I hope that all these writings about your own life experiences end up in another book, Sue. You definitely have the knack. I love to read your own little life stories. You can certainly touch on every human emotion I can think of (and then some likely). Thank you so much for always providing such a wonderful read.
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Thanks, Anne. There are so many books to be written… I doubt I’ll have the lifespan left for all of them 🙂
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