When I returned home, I discovered my son's library book was on the counter, not in his backpack, one of the cats had
chosen my bed as the perfect place to throw up and I was out of two of the six ingredients necessary to make the dinner casserole I had already started putting together. It was a bad day at Black Rock.
Although I pride myself in being on the cutting edge of household engineering (I was one of the first in this community to own a Dust Buster), there are days when everything comes up crabgrass. And
that's why I went to the store to buy bubble bath.
You know those commercials where the woman's kids are screaming and yelling and the dog is barking and the phone is ringing and she begs the bubble
bath to take her away? That's what I wanted. I wanted something that smelled good and was relaxing and would make me feel warm and sleepy without giving me a hangover and allow me to crawl into bed with all
my cares tossed to the wind. I wanted to feel soft and feminine and pampered. I wanted a little break.
I ran to the store to find bubble bath that fit the bill and didn't cost a fortune.
Spending a lot is counterproductive since my 10-year-old daughter, who has the instincts of a big game hunter, automatically zeroes in on any bubble bath, bath oil, shampoo, cream rinse or nail polish I own
and converts it to her own use. Even five-gallon drums wouldn't last her more than two days.
So I went searching for something floral, maybe roses or gardenias. Surely that couldn't be such a
difficult thing to find. What I found wasn't floral but a whole menu of scents, most of which normally occupy space on dinner plates, not in bathtubs.
There was nothing that smelled like roses.
Instead, I could take a bubble bath fragranced with avocado or thyme or carrot juice. There were bottles that claimed to smell like tea and herbs and grass (the kind that's legal). There were bottles that
smelled of gingerbread and rain forests and sea water. And there were lots of berries: raspberry and blueberry and wild berry and even berry-berry.
And, without exception, they all smelled like the
inside of a trash can. A very expensive trash can, but a trash can, nonetheless. And, since time was short and I was tired, I grabbed one that claimed to smell like oregano and other herbs, took it home,
poured it in the bath water, climbed in and surprise! I was still in my own home with screaming kids, ringing phone and barking cat (we don't have a dog). It took me nowhere. So I dried off and went to bed.
The next morning I got up and fixed coffee. When my husband sat down to his morning cup I asked him how he slept.
"Fine, except I woke up with this overwhelming desire for spaghetti for some
inexplicable reason," he said.
OK, so it didn't take me away as promised. But it did resolve the dilemma of what to fix for dinner!
