February 21, 2008
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Coming Clean
I have noticed this phenomenon previously, but I don’t think I ever mentioned it here: when I confess on Xanga to some personal lapse or flaw, the public confession appears to facilitate my correction or transcendence of whatever it was I was confessing. I say, “appears,” because I don’t know whether I have cleaned up my act because I’d confessed, or if I had confessed because I was ready to clean up my act. It’s probably not strictly a matter of either/or.
Not long ago, in my entry about cutting my hair, I mentioned that I was filthy, hadn’t had a shower or shampoo since I got out of the hospital over two months ago. That’s not actually alarming, not even surprising if one knows my circumstances here. In this area, where private home water systems are the exception rather than the rule, and people are more casual about personal hygiene than city dwellers tend to be, there are some people who haven’t showered in years. To get a shower, most of us have to go to the laundromat and pay around $5.00 for a few minutes of warm water.
Until I caught that case of fungal pneumonia in the late summer last year, my practice was to fill a plastic camp shower bag and shower in the bathtub that came built into this old trailer. Two things combine to prevent me from being able to do that now. The bathroom still contains residue from the electrical fire a couple of years ago, which make my breathing in there, already compromised under the best circumstances, difficult bordering on impossible. Also, since I have been ill and unable to get to the laundromat, dirty clothes have been piling up in the bathtub, for lack of a better place to pile them.
I have not gone totally unwashed since coming home from the hospital. When I change clothes, I do a quick “wet-wipe bath.” It takes some of the stink off, but does nothing for the stringy hair. Today, as soon as I woke, I started preparing for a more thorough and satisfying wash. Standing on a flattened cardboard box in front of the wood stove, I stripped from the waist up, sponged my skin clean, shampooed my hair, rinsed once, emptied the pan and got clean water, then did a second shampoo and rinse, and took off my pajama bottoms and washed the rest of me.
It was far from easy. I nebulized and loaded up on bronchodilators before beginning, and stopped for more, and for several rests to catch my breath, during the course of the stand-up bath. The cost was fatigue — muscles burning with lactic acid, hand tremors, aches in shoulders and legs. I might not have the stamina for sitting up at the computer for as many hours as I have done in recent days. That’s a price I am willing to pay.
It feels great not having that stringy hair clinging to my scalp and neck, and the feel of clean clothes on clean skin. Love that sensation! There’s another unanticipated benefit, too. After I had gotten all clean and squeaky, Doug went out to bring in firewood. He came back all puffing and panting from shoveling snow off the woodpile, and revealed that we have only a very limited supply of birch left, and most of it is stuck in ice.
Birch produces a long-lasting and relatively slow fire. The rest of our wood supply is spruce, which burns fast and hot and produces a lot of flying sparks. Until the stovepipe is cleared of its accumulation of creosote, burning spruce would be an invitation to a chimney fire. If I had known about the firewood situation before I bathed, I would have waited until after Doug and I had cleaned the stovepipe. As it is, I raised my eyebrows, held my clean hands out, turned them this way and that, and told Doug he is on his own for the chimney cleaning. I will advise and supervise, but I am not willing to get this squeaky clean body and my clean jammies all besmirched with soot and ash so soon.
Amazingly, gratifyingly, he agreed.
Today, I’m going to be working on a followup to yesterday’s Hells Angels entry, expanding on what I wrote and responding to comments. If I bog down on that task or get a second wind, maybe I’ll get around to visit a few of you. It has been fun, these last few days, catching up with what’s going on at Xanga.
Comments (21)
yikes. no private water systems? i don’t know how you do it…..
i hope your health returns*
I can’t help but chuckle at this one… I would think that the state of your health alone would be all the reason you needed to sit and supervise while Doug cleans!
I’m learning just how very much I take for granted.
Enjoy that squeaky clean while it lasts! *hugs*
yeah, you need to just rest up until you feel better.
i know i sound like such a city kid, but i can’t go a day without a shower. when i spent a couple of weeks backpacking up in the mountains above aspen, i swam in the icy streams a couple of times, and my long hair was still a matted mess by the time i got back down from the hills. i took two showers that first night back just to get my hair back in shape.
now that my hair’s shorter, it might not be such a big deal.
i remember the days of taking a shower with a watering can. i would heat up water on the stove and make it the temperature for a shower. Master would shower first and then i would shower afterwards with His help. You get used to it if that is all you had for a shower and you don’t miss a private water system. Now that we live in a more civilized area and have a regular city water system, we still don’t take running water for granted. Heck it was not too long ago we actually got a hot water tank. So now we have hot and cold running water. But my memory of days ago is still fresh in my mind. You learn to adapt because that is all you have and you don’t think about anything else. hugs
that would be the one thing that would make me not want to live in alaska I do prefer being able to shower….although my bathing in the summer is often done in the lake…which has really soft water
fnord.
Oh Kathy…..you are amazing.
Hang in there.
Oh water hot is a noble thing….tralalala….happy clean hair and body day. Since I have been being a hermit I only showered when I had to, which was not often. Now that I am venturing out more and more, I find myself showering every other day (the gym). I hope that you don’t pay for your excursion into cleanliness with more exhaustion tomorrow.
I have had more than a few of those standup washoff baths myself. Age really plays the devil with a tub bath and the cold weather works on me as well. It takes a lot of energy anymore for a bath and boy do I love it when I can but a basin of water is better than nothing when you have to make the choice. Good for Doug being so accomodating. He must appreciate your squeeky clean.
Sorry its been a while, i’m still here, still reading just not got much to say,
Where the hell do you live
I don’t think I could go that long without a shower. I went 5 days a few weeks ago, when I was sick with the bronchitis/flu/whatever… and then, sick as I was, I couldn’t stand it any longer…
Maybe as well as nagging Doug to do chores, you could try to get him to come up with some inventions, such as how to rig up plumbing pipes. You might also want to make him wear some kind of impromptu rag over his mouth as a mask if the air in the bathroom electrical fire zone, chimney, etc., is really noxious. Doug is actually learning how to be a handyman on the job from helping you with chores like these.
By the way, are you entitled to Medicaid under the circumstances?
@forwhomthebelsentolls - No, we don’t qualify for Medicaid because we need two vehicles and my husband’s business is so far from home that he can’t commute, so we maintain two households.
ROFLMAO @ “rig up plumbing pipes” This one deserves an entry of its own.
I always feel much better about life in general after a good refreshing shower… and I never wait longer than 3 or 4 days. I like to imagine the refreshedness multiplied
Sounds like it’s worth the effort.
I do worry a little about your chimney/fire situation. I hope everything goes as well as possible with that adventure.
@EminemsRevenge - Here is the answer to your question.
@SuSu - THAT makes sense…must’ve glossed over that
My aunt lived in Kodiak before moving to Anchorage and then Australia…and she STILL can’t escape her Jamaican brethren
e.r. needs to read the outhouse action adventure story. **snortle**
being suburban born and bred or bred and born
and thusly raised…i can’t imagine not having at least one shower a day.
however…who knows what i’d be like were i to have been raised under different circumstances and chosen a different path?
i used to shovel horse shit for free in exchange for all of the riding time i could get in in a day or weekend. never minded the smell or the dirt then. relished the showers afterward but wouldn’t've traded the sweat and shit and snow and mud and rain for anything else at the time.
and might i say, ma’am…i’m SO glad to see your/you’re writing again.
makes me happy.