Bathing (& Spiders)
February 15th, 2016
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It was Monday. I turned on the faucet and began filling the bathtub. I was bathing much more frequently, smoothing out my skin and relaxing my muscles. I wanted to be as perfect as I could be for Nelum when I arrived in Sunnyland.
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If he could actually afford me, I'd go on a cleanse. Being a concubine in truth would give me reason to cleanse my body more thoroughly, I thought. I would like to have that excuse.
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Washing myself I thought about my skin and the time when I had showered with Eagle, (a short-lived, beautiful lover) back in the summer of 2014, living in Snowland. Eagle had remarked on how smooth my skin was with surprise the first time he touched me.
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"The scrub brush is the secret," I said to him in the shower. "Full-body gentle exfoliation with an oil-based natural soap."
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I offered him the scrub-brush, but Eagle declined. He washed himself with his hands.
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I thought back even further, to the years with Porcupine, my third love. One time after he had bathed I said, "You know you hardly got yourself clean at all."
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"What you talkin' 'bout? I washed," he said.
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"Scratch the bottom of your foot with your fingernail," I said.
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He looked at me, an eyebrow raised, one side of his mouth quirked. His face said: You're kidding me, right?
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"Come on," I said. "Just try it."
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He lifted one foot up and reached down to scratch it. His eyebrows raised in surprise. "You're right," he said, astonished. He giggled a little, trying to diffuse his discomfort.
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"You know an awful lot about bathing for someone who hardly does it," he said. I was still in the bathtub scrubbing. He was toweling himself.
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"That's why I know a lot about bathing," I said. "When you don't wash very often, you pay more attention to what works and what doesn't and why."
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I had been eighteen or nineteen at the time. I washed more then than I had as a child.
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As a child I was very resistant to bathing. I would put it off as long as possible. I often went as long as three months without bathing it all. During the year I was nine, for example, I may have washed a total of sixteen times in the entire year.
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My knees had very bumpy skin, and my elbows too. As I entered puberty and cared more about how I looked and felt to the touch, I paid attention to what made my skin smoother. I had rough, scaly skin to work with, so it took more effort to get it soft and smooth.
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I tried soaking in the bathtub for two hours. It helped, but it wasn't enough. I tried doing it a second day. It helped even more, but still the bumps were there. On the third day of soaking in the tub for two hours, the bumps were almost gone from my knees, and entirely gone from my elbows. Years of hardly washing could be erased by three days of bathtub soaking.
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My bumpy, dry skin was transformed by the hot soak. I felt touchable and beautiful.
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But still, I didn't feel like doing that often, so I would go weeks or months again without bathing. I didn't smell bad, so no one complained or cared. My parents would ask about it at times, but somehow I weaseled my way out of bathing more frequently.
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Over my teenage years I wanted my skin to be presentable more and more often. My first love, Wolf, got me started with better hygiene. He was particularly demanding about me brushing my teeth. Dragon, my second love, strongly encouraged me to shower at least twice a week.
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My bathing investigations continued, exploring different kinds of soaps, oils, scrub-brushes, and comparing showers to bathes.
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I pondered all of these things as I bathed, and attempted for the first time to dictate to my tablet while in the bathtub. It didn't work very well. I had to repeatedly dry my hands and correct the typos of the dictation.
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Still, the few paragraphs I dictated were enough to prompt me to write on the subject at more length in the future. March 4th, 2016, after returning from Sunnyland and catching up on many things, I went back to my dictation and fleshed it out into what you're reading now.
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. . .
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Two days later, on Saturday, February 20th 2016, I was further contemplating my upcoming travel plans to Sunnyland. Hibiscus was still off to the west on a work-trip. He had left on the fifteenth and I wouldn't see him again until the last day of February, when I returned from Sunnyland.
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I was dealing with Hibiscus's absence fairly well this time. I was beginning to get used to it - our daily presence in each other's lives would come and go, and that was okay. It provided constant contrast that caused me to appreciate him more upon being reunited. It gave me time alone with myself, and time alone with Paladin too.
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That Saturday I sat down in the evening to write. I wrote:
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. . .
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Yesterday I had two lady bugs come to me as signs. One came to me before going to The Root. The other came to me after. These were very positive signs, and there were no other omens, good or bad.
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But today, and the five days before yesterday, there have been spiders. On the five prior days, it was one spider per day. The first three times were easy to explain away by the little spats I had with Paladin shortly after each spider. The fourth day seemed to be about the e-mail from my mother since I was thinking about Snowland right when the spider jumped out.
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The next one I wasn't sure exactly what it was about. I tried to be more conscious and present.
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Now, today, I've had a spider that has come to me in the shower, another I happened to look up and see while fretting in the bathroom, and a third in the stairwell when I opened the window, and popping out at me again just now when I closed the window. Three spiders, five different sightings of these spiders today.
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I've been really careful in my interactions with Paladin to be extra loving. We collected maple sap. We took the recycling out. We explored Low's and bought a wooden shelf that was marked down. We stopped by Wegmans to get white vinegar and I decided I really wanted strawberries, so I got those too.
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Now we're back, and still the spider trend persists. What am I to anticipate? Does this pertain to my upcoming trip to see Nelum in Sunnyland? That seems plausible, and yet, it feels like it ought to have something to do with Paladin, or something big that I'm forgetting to think about or do.
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I'm doing some transcript editing for White Whale, but that seemed to be coming along well. I do need to come up with a plan for doing my taxes, but I should have an entire month to worry about that.
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That leaves my health. My stomach is hurting a bit. I went on a fast from fruit to heal the awful sores I acquired in my mouth. That worked. I felt better in some other ways too. But I think, by the end, I ate too many nuts. And also, I ate potatoes on three occasions to make up for the fact that fruit usually makes up a third of my calorie intake.
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At first, the fasting from fruit helped with my cravings. By the end of a week I was just as crazy with cravings as ever.
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I do want to take extra good care of myself before heading to Sunnyland. I want to be prepared for anything and not be compromised at all.
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I could steam my face and do a neti pot. That's always a good measure to help maintain healthy function. It seems like a small response to so many spiders, but perhaps that's all it takes - a small response.