In the tub, part deux

I’ve decided to change the subtitle of this blog. “Bethany’s Ramblings Part II” does not really fit anymore; while I started as a travel bloggess, I’ve done precious little traveling since then. Instead, I find myself procrastinating in new and interesting ways. I avoid writing by making little odd things; I avoid craft by wandering away and writing. That actually loops well, since I enjoy both of those things.

I should mention a moment when those things did not loop well. My last post was all about plotting in the tub. Well, I’ve tried crafting in the tub as well. For an ex-roommate’s birthday, I created a truly genius home-improvement project for the bathtub. (Actually, the genius bit is overdoing it, for a number of reasons, one of them being that said roommate was prone to overheating and thus did not really take baths. I’m not sure if I was really so selfish as to give her a gift that was made for me, or if I really believed that she just didn’t take baths ’cause it wasn’t pretty enough in there. The latter is what I remember, but it seems kinda implausible.)

The vision was a tiled wall, covered with randomly spaced flickering tealights. Sounds pretty, right? I fashioned gold wire into tealight holders, attached sucker cups, and voila! Pretty, pretty death.

Death, you say? Surely you exaggerate. Mmm… not really. Maybe just a tad. You see, there’s a few things that my only-slightly-past-high-school brain did not take into account.

1) Gold wire, while prettily holding light things up, does not encompass everything.

2) Tea lights, when left burning too long, sometimes allow the flame to overcome the structural integrity of the wee tin container they are held in. This, combined with 1), equates to flaming drops of wax running down the wall, and sometimes directly into the tub.

3) Mr. Bubble is flammable.

I feel I would have done fine if just 1) and 2) existed, but the second 3) came into play it was all over. I had decided to “test out” the present (really, at this point I think I really did intend it to be her gift, not mine), and was taking a flickering bubble bath with a glass of wine. It was exactly what I had envisioned; beautiful, flamey, goodness.

My roommates were out in the front room watching a movie. What they recall was an odd combination of sounds; a “fwoosh!” followed quickly by an “AAIGH!”

What I recall was a flaming bit of wax, not much to be worried about as I easily moved my leg in time. It became worrisome when the entire surface of the bath became engulfed in flame. Seriously. We’re talking True Lies, shoulda been swimming under the surface, fireball.

I guess it makes sense. Oil lying on top of water will ignite, and I’m sure bubble bath has a fair amount of oil, and I hadn’t skimped on the bubbles. But Mr. Bubble! Ya think there’d be a warning label! Why haven’t I heard of parents flambeing their kids this way? Okay, I guess most mothers don’t light candles to give their toddlers a bath, but still. Was I really the first to light my bath on fire?

Quite possibly. Luckily, I wasn’t harmed. The flames extinguished themselves fairly quickly, and I was up and out of that tub in mere fractions of a second. There may have been some naked running down the hall, screaming, but that was just the shock, not actual burning flesh.

My bathtub nowadays is rather plain, with nary a candle in sight. And it will stay that way. That is one intersection that God did not intend woman to discover. I’ll keep my crafts in the main room, and my plotting in the tub, and ne’er shall the two cross again.

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