01.19.23

I’m not much a bath person. I don’t take them often. But when I have the urge to sit in the tub, I just have to. It’s the only thing I can think about until I do it.

I drew a bath immediately when I got home (cue Amelia Bedelia’s pencil sketch of my bathroom, hardy har — that bitch can’t get anything right. But boy, does she have heart). I plugged my tub. When I first moved into this apartment, I was thrilled to find the pre-war and/or fifth floor of it all did not affect the water pressure. But after a week or so my tub started draining really slowly. I would lament to my parents about it on the phone, always finishing my showers ankle-deep in dirty water. I made several DIY attempts at fixing what must have been a stopped drain, because I felt like I had texted my super too much in pursuit of a laundry card when I first moved in and wanted to handle it myself. One day, while plunging the drain with staggering vigor, I noticed that the metal apparatus next to my tub was rattling. I didn’t know what that thing was. I looked up “metal thing next to tub pre-war building,” and found a Reddit thread confirming that that was, in fact, the drain stop. It was just really old school. A quick adjustment of it resolved the slow drain problem immediately. I laughed and laughed at how easy it could have been, how much time and money I wasted on fixing a problem that was so simple. I was so glad I never called my super about it, and had him come up to fix my drain. Surely he’d have thought I was an idiot! I narrowly escaped humiliation.

I turn the faucet all the way to hot, because I know it will take a while for it to really get hot. I dump in a few healthy glugs of Dr. Teal’s bubble bath. I may not take baths often, but I like to be prepared for when I do. The bottle is pretty dusty. I clean it off before returning it to its ledge.

While the tub fills, I open some packages I received. Some prints of photos I ordered from iPrintFromHome.com, a place I order prints from because I know them to be a small family business in New York State, and because their website looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2004, which I find very charming. I then find that I accidentally ordered four 10x10 frames instead of my intended two. My mom gave me two sketches — small ideas she painted on paper before she decides which ones she wants to do bigger, on canvases. I frame one to put on my new end table on the far side of my couch. It looks so fucking good.

I put my hair in a bun on top of my head, a hairstyle I wear almost exclusively in the tub (I’m more of a high ponytail girl), and get in. It is the perfect temperature.

I go to the note in my phone labeled “Albums I Like,” because I can’t remember them on my own (this dementia-like behavior also appears in the index card list of shows I am currently watching kept next to my TV, because if I sit down without the list, I turn the TV on and literally cannot remember what I was watching yesterday). I scroll through the note a bit and settle on Joni Mitchell’s Blue — a bit of an on-the-nose pick for a moody tub, you could say, but I’ve been seeing a lot of Joni Mitchell stuff on Twitter and YouTube lately, so I’ve been meaning to give this a good and appreciative re-listen.

It’s nice to be alone. I am alone a lot of the time, a reality that I need to mitigate now and then. I go into the office once or twice a week to make sure I see other people sometimes. I went in today, before grabbing dinner with my friend at a pizza place under the Port Authority exit ramp (surprisingly good for an under-bridge restaurant). I’m the only person from my team who goes in, so I never really have anyone to sit with. I am constantly afraid of getting “caught,” as if I have no right to be there (I famously work there), or afraid that someone will tell me I’m sitting in their seat or I’m somehow otherwise in their way. Today, I was walking down a hall and saw an unfamiliar and important-looking person walking toward me, and panicked so much that I ducked into a printer alcove to avoid any unsavory interaction (which would never happen). I grabbed three paperclips to make it seem like I had a reason to go in there. I felt insane carrying them back to my desk, where there were no papers to be clipped.

With my useless magenta paperclips in my bag, and after having dinner with Melissa, I walked one stop further up the A line than I needed to, because I felt like I hadn’t moved enough that day. I didn’t mind getting caught in the cold rain, walking ten blocks as my Lindsey Weir jacket (my affectionate moniker for my oversized Salvation Army jacket I got in college) got soaked. It just made me want to take a bath.

Eventually, after a cycle and a half of Blue, I drain the tub and stand to take a shower. I know this is an incredible waste of water.