Mr. Bubble Rediscovered

I have a bathtub in my new apartment, and lately, in a blatant attempt to delay studying, I’ve started taking long baths before my showers each day.

I’ve been experimenting with different bath products: so far, I’ve tried Victoria’s Secret Indulgent Bath Bubbles in Enchanted Apple scent, The Healing Garden’s Green Teatherapy Private Sanctuary Body Soak (a bath salt), and good old Mr. Bubble. The green tea soak was amazing—I really did feel refreshed and the delicious scent lingered on my skin for hours afterward. Mr. Bubble is best when you don’t really want to soak (there’s almost no scent, so no aromatherapy effects), and just want to sit around making bubble sculptures and trying to see how big a pile you can stack on your knees before it topples over. As for Victoria’s Secret, the scent was good but that’s about all it had going for it. None of the muscle-relaxing properties of the bath salts, and although there were a fair amount of bubbles, they were insufficiently fine-grained for bubble sculptures, and weren’t as long-lasting as Mr. Bubble. And the VS bubbles tend to slide instead of stack.

I use my baths as an excuse to read things I shouldn’t be reading (i.e., reading for entertainment as opposed to study), as it is impossible to take a bubble bath and hold a 10-pound textbook at the same time, but extremely easy to hold a copy of The Economist or a paperback Shakespeare play. The Shakespeare, though, is actually assigned reading for my Law and Literature class, so I do feel less guilty—but it’s not assigned until next month.

My roommate and I share a love for great food, so in our two short weeks living here we have filled our apartment with tons and tons of it. A selection: three kinds of cereal, Tiramisu, Three-layer chocolate cake, gnocchi gorgonzola, gnocchi florentina, vegetable pasta, curry fried rice, fettuccini with meatball marinara, herb salad with creamy basil dressing, mango gelato, raspberry gelato, vanilla gelato, taquitos, three kinds of dumplings, herb salad, three kinds of potato chips, chocolate covered blueberries…and lots more.

I suspect that might be why the boyfriends (or at least my boyfriend) are constantly over, rooting around the fridge in the wee hours of the morning. He gets something other than vending machine sandwiches and Mc Nuggets to eat, and I get an in-house furniture-installer and bug-squasher. Everyone wins.