Oh, for a long, deep, brand-new bathtub. With a place to put my head, and another place to put my feet. Sloping down at just the right angle so I can lie back and not get an awful crick in my neck. A bathtub for reading in, relaxing in, and -- oh yes -- bathing in.
At "The Grey Yonder" (my first home away from home), the bathtub was chipped and scoured. One of my roommates ("The Bunnykiller") decided to spruce it up by painting it with regular wall paint. Within days the paint began to peel in long strips, clogging up the drain. Eventually the tub floor became slimy. It was not a good bathtub.
At "Amrita-ta-ta" (my second-last home), the bathtub had a small, dime-sized chip in the enamel. Twice, over the seven years I lived there, I'd wake up to a sudden shattering noise in the night, and discover in the morning that the hole had gotten bigger, spraying enamel shards all over the bathroom. I think that the metal underneath was slowly rusting, and when the pressure of the rust hit a certain level the enamel around the hole would explode.
Here (in "Little Lemuria"), the bathtub is in awful shape. When I first moved in it was thickly grimed with a mixture of dirt and water-mineral residue. Every morning I'd spray CLR over some particularly grody spot. When I returned from work I'd get a sponge and scrub and scrub and scrub. It's better now -- the dirt is gone at least -- but I have little motivation to clean the "ring around the tub" when the whole thing looks like something you'd find in a junkyard.
Oh, for a nice bathtub...just once!
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