Sing hey! for the bath at close of day
that washes the weary mud away!
A loon is he that will not sing:
O! Water Hot is a noble thing!
O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain,
and the brook that leaps from hill to plain;
but better than rain or rippling streams
is Water Hot that smokes and steams.
O! Water cold we may pour at need
down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed;
but better is Beer if drink we lack,
and Water Hot poured down the back.
O! Water is fair that leaps on high
in a fountain white beneath the sky;
but never did fountain sound so sweet
as splashing Hot Water with my feet!
that washes the weary mud away!
A loon is he that will not sing:
O! Water Hot is a noble thing!
O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain,
and the brook that leaps from hill to plain;
but better than rain or rippling streams
is Water Hot that smokes and steams.
O! Water cold we may pour at need
down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed;
but better is Beer if drink we lack,
and Water Hot poured down the back.
O! Water is fair that leaps on high
in a fountain white beneath the sky;
but never did fountain sound so sweet
as splashing Hot Water with my feet!
- J.R.R. Tolkin "The Fellowship of the Ring"
Anybody who knows me well, knows that I love nothing more than an nice long, hot shower. Whenever I've visited my dear Grossmama, I've always tried to curb this habit, knowing that her commitment to conservation means that one takes showers that are short and to the point. In college, I was delighted to discover that my roommate shared my habit/vice and for 2 1/2 years we gladly split our somewhat higher water bill (don't judge - Germany isn't California). And since getting married, Philipp has gotten used to my regularly transforming the bathroom into a sauna. I've often joke with him about somebody needing to research the "shower effect", as I like to call it: the way that you can start out a shower tense and in a bad mood and emerge a calm peaceful being. For a few years now, I've regularly declared that as soon as I live somewhere longer than a year or two (and have the space), I'm going paint the above poem on some wall, ceiling, or door in our bathroom, declaring my love for hot water being "poured down the back".
Two weeks ago we went on a spontaneous three-day vacation down to Kep, on Cambodia's southern coast. We stayed in a small bungalow that was fairly unremarkable - except for our hamster-mouse roommate - but that did have a hot shower. It was then that I realized that this was the first hot shower/bath I had had since the morning of January 7th! The showers in Khmer houses don't normally come with hot water heaters, since it's so hot here most of the time that you don't really need hot water. But, there are cooler mornings or evenings after a long, hard (and not 100°F) day where I do miss it. I just hadn't realized that I hadn't had a single hot shower since I'd left Germany at the beginning of the year.
Deciding to make up for lost time and with all the hot water I could want at my disposal (again, don't judge - it rains a lot here) and three cool rainy vacation days, I indulged a nice long, hot shower twice a day. It's interesting how something that was once so commonplace and unremarkable had become the absolute luxury for me, simply because I hadn't had it almost seven months.
Two weeks ago we went on a spontaneous three-day vacation down to Kep, on Cambodia's southern coast. We stayed in a small bungalow that was fairly unremarkable - except for our hamster-mouse roommate - but that did have a hot shower. It was then that I realized that this was the first hot shower/bath I had had since the morning of January 7th! The showers in Khmer houses don't normally come with hot water heaters, since it's so hot here most of the time that you don't really need hot water. But, there are cooler mornings or evenings after a long, hard (and not 100°F) day where I do miss it. I just hadn't realized that I hadn't had a single hot shower since I'd left Germany at the beginning of the year.
Deciding to make up for lost time and with all the hot water I could want at my disposal (again, don't judge - it rains a lot here) and three cool rainy vacation days, I indulged a nice long, hot shower twice a day. It's interesting how something that was once so commonplace and unremarkable had become the absolute luxury for me, simply because I hadn't had it almost seven months.
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