Here's a thing that works for me

Time to take a break from cranky blogger items. Mainly because I am not a cranky person. I mean, I have my issues and I sometimes rant and fulminate against a world gone mad – but mainly I’m a pretty mellow and good-humored guy.

Sure we live in a world gone mad. Everybody that’s been around since the beginning of time has lived in a world gone mad. In some realms the old planet gets better, and in others it gets worse. Therefore, we must arm ourselves against the vicissitudes of life by arming ourselves against them as best we can. The best way we can do this is by indulging in ‘particular pleasures.’

“Booze, broads or the Bible,” whatever gets you through the night, Sinatra was once purported to have said. He lived by that maxim, so I have read, but he still died (his huge talent notwithstanding) an ill-tempered, alcoholic old sonofabitch, so maybe he wasn’t really with the program.

By particular pleasures, what I mean is something more innocent, and less demanding. I am looking towards a simple thing that succeeds in the manner of balm in the manner of which Hamlet saw blessed sleep as a thing that “knits up the ravelled sleave of care,” (sic) – no, nobody knows what in hell that really means, or what a ‘sleave’ is, for that matter, but it sounds comforting and that’s what counts.

So, I think all who are relatively sane, have some relatively harmless items or practices that work to dispel the demons and blue-meanies in our lives. It may be reading a good book or the Bible; it may be making sweet and gentle love; it may be hugging a friend or spouse; it may be a good family meal; it may be a day on the slopes skiing; or it may be just a time of quiet meditation.

For me it’s a bath. I don’t mean just any old bath. I mean a bath in our big Jacuzzi tub. The selling point in buying our house a decade ago was that it had a large and commodious ensuite Jacuzzi. This opened up a world of all sorts of titillating possibilities a deux, but it also offered what is to me the ultimate of balm.

Every time I’ve been away for a few days, as I just have been, one of my first thoughts on the way home is that I can indulge in a ‘big bath.’ I can run the water, and then turn on the jets and then utterly luxuriate. I wash, of course, and shampoo, but mainly I just luxuriate I do this once a week. Most of the time I shower. Showers are quick and efficient and I like feeling the hot water coursing down my tan, lean and studly torso – ha! But seriously, showers are efficient and to-the-point. Jacuzzis aren’t. They are indulgence. A good Jacuzzi sets the world right for me, not only during the time I’m within, but for a considerable time afterwards. Of course, if my wife wants to shower after I’ve Jacuzzi’d, then she has to wait because I’ve used all the water. Oh well, a bit of self-indulgence is part of what a ‘particular pleasure’ is about.

What’s your particular pleasure?