My showers come in two sizes: Incredible and Legendary

For as long as I can remember, I’ve adored my daily showers. I have one soon after I get up and have one shortly before I go to bed most days, although weekends are a bit more flexible. The morning one dissolves the film of sleep from my protesting eyes, brings my brain back from its wanderings in the woods of fantasy, and gets my body converted into “vertical mode” . The evening one caps off the day, allowing me to relax in the hot water and steam, letting the muscles and nerves that have propelled me through the day to untwist and unclench, allowing me to fall asleep much faster.

Plus, I’m just a clean freak, dontcha know?

The pursuit of a great, warm, powerful stream of water is not without its trials and tribulations, however. There are precious few units anywhere in the world that can produce the sort of pleasure-stream that I really enjoy, so I take great interest in attempting to make my own environment as ideal as possible.

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To this end, I have discovered a method by which (for now) I can get a really great shower:

1. I buy myself a white Rainmaker Classic II, which is a plastic, low-flow shower head of a decent yet cheap quality, but has no-clog rubber jet nipples and a fairly wide head.
2. I open this up and remove the low-flow, tree-huggin’ hardware — the screen, restrictor, etc. I appreciate Mother Earth and all, but this is my shower we’re talking about. I’ll save water by not giving the grass a drink or something.
3. I then take a 1/2″ drill bit and use it to drill out the inside bore of the shower head until I have a large, straight, high-flow conduit for the water to blast through.
4. Install in the shower and test. Ooooohh….floodwaters from on high!
5. The last step is to make sure my water heater is set very high — right now, mine is kicking out water around 145°F or so. I’ll have to lower that in awhile to prevent anything from happening to my soon-to-arrive child, but for now, it allows me to get 30 to 45 minute showers without using up the heater’s worth.

I can hear you now….30 to 45 minute showers? Yes, on occasion they’re like that, but they’re rarely below 15 minutes on a normal day. You see, I rather like my showers. They’re relaxing, fulfilling, enjoyable. Perhaps it’s because of my loving-water nature or maybe it’s because I don’t get much solitude except in a good, warm deluge twice a day, but for whatever reason, they go long. And I’m ok with that.

This, naturally, drove my parents up a wall when I was growing up. They couldn’t conceive as to what I could possibly be doing for that long besides screwing around. They came up with a system of stomping on the floor to warn me that I was taking too long (the shower was in the basement), then eventually they’d start flashing the lights to let me know I had reached the end of my cleansing journey. At this point, continuing in my bathing was risking having the lights shut off entirely, leaving me to finish in the dark (which I did a few times) and endure a tongue-lashing when I got upstairs again. “What could you POSSIBLY be doing in there for THIRTY FREAKING MINUTES???” *sigh*

So, now that I am grown, on my own, in my own house, and paying my own bills, I have however long of a shower I damned well feel like, and some of them are truly incredible (just ask my wife). We often shower together, which I think is a lovely activity for couples (sexual reasons aside), but results in someone always freezing their ass off while the other one is enjoying the warmth. I have it in my plans to construct a new shower sooner than later and, when I do, it will have double showerheads and controls so we can shower together and both keep our tips from falling off.

So…the question remains: What do I do in such a long shower?

Well, after I get in, there’s usually 5 minutes or so of a phase called, “Getting Wet, Warm, and Relaxed”. I just let the water play over me, making sure it hits all parts, and get the water temperature adjusted correctly. Then I’ll often stand, back to the stream, and let it splay over me for awhile, watching the water droplets fly and rivulets of warmth run down my arms and chest.

After this, I’ll usually start washing, top-down. Hair is first, since it’s so oily anyway, then I grab the bar and soap up with that directly (don’t use a washcloth unless there’s scrubbing needed), then my face (including ears) is usually last. At some point in this procedure, my glasses get washed and re-hung on a hook to drip. And I spot-check various places, including the twig and giggleberries and other nether-regional crevices; I’m a big fan of being spotless when possible.

Rinsing off is a big one. I don’t like the feeling of ANY soap on me whatsoever and will spend a lot of time rinsing to ensure that there’s no possible way that any remains. For this reason and others, things like conditioner, hair spray, lotions, and any other cleaning product that leaves something behind drives me nutty. (Yes, I do wear deodorant and cologne, but that’s about my limit.)

After the rinse-fest might come another period of standing there and letting the water hit me while I think, it depends on how rushed I am at the time. My shower is my think tank — many of these blog postings get their origination in the shower, and I work out a lot of mental issues while under the warming spray. I don’t know what it is about being naked, wet, and warm, but it gets the old brain juices flowing for some reason.

It may very well be a property of the water itself, which I have endless fascination with. I will often fold my arms and let the water build up in the “pond” built against my chest, or let the streams play across my arms and hands, watching how the water flows and follows, eventually to leap away to slam into the concrete at my feet. I’m simply mesmerized by it all.

Finally, when I’ve pruned up enough and feel rinsed and relaxed enough, I’ll make a decision, shut off the shower, and jump out for a toweling-off.

While my shower time may not be typical of most people, I think there are probably a fair whack of people out there that love their showers just as much as I do, if nothing else, for the solitude and relaxation it provides in a busy day. A good, long, hot shower ranks up right there with buying the fluffy toilet paper, in my book. Life is too short to a) take short, cold, unpleasant showers and b) wipe with toilet paper that scours your bits. I’ll gladly pay for the water/gas bill to get a good experience because it’s very much worth to me what I get out of it in mental satisfaction.

Plus, I’m just a clean freak, dontcha know?