In Heat

     This is not going to be as raunchy as it sounds, okay, this next sentence may still be. My husband and I like to be in heat, but not with each other. Reed likes to hot tub. Most of our lives that meant he sat in the bathtub continually letting out the cooling water to refill it with hot. Thanks to our daughter we now have a hot tub. She worked for a spa company and refurbished a trade-in unit as a gift to us.  When we installed it on our front deck, I told my niece and nephew, who had confused us with rich people, that we were now officially rich. The only problem is I don't like to hot tub. I haven't bathed in years, I am a shower person, a long session in the hot tub for me would be 5 minutes. I love being warm and there is something appealingly decadent about sitting outside warm and content while looking at the stars in winter, but I don't have the patience to stay there.  You have to shower before you use the spa and again afterward. Reed loves to soak in it for half an hour in the mornings on weekends. I like to sleep in but, as soon as my feet hit the floor, I am showered, groomed and dressed in half an hour. The other reasonable time to hot tub is before bedtime but the shower and walk on the cold deck getting there and back spoil the attraction for me.
     One place I do sometimes use a hot tub is at a hotel. The reason I am willing to soak in the chlorine scented stranger bisque at a public facility but not at home with familiar germs, is that when I am staying at a hotel I have leisure time. I won't need to jump out to put in a load of laundry or any of the hundred housework tasks that fill my days. At hotels I can relax. And being in the hot tub is better than being in the pool, which is way too cold.
     My favorite place to be in heat is in our laundry room. Anyone who has spent much time around my house knows that I sit on my dryer. When I was a little girl our clothes dryer vented out the front near the floor. One of my favorite childhood memories is sitting on the floor in front of that dryer. I would warm my hands, still red from playing outside in the snow, until the tingling, pin prick sensation made me pull away. Besides making me warm, it was also a good place to sing, as with water in the shower, the sound of the dryer made my voice sound smoother. I felt sorry for my playmates whose dryers vented outside and we could only enjoy them when we were standing out in the snow.
     My husband and I didn't have our own dryer until our second year of marriage, those years happened to be record cold winters in the already-cold-enough town of Helena, Montana. We vented the dryer inside in the winter more for self preservation than comfort. We lived in apartments through the Denver phase of our marriage and, even in big cities, people would think it strange to see a tenant sitting on the dryer in the laundry room and, of course, they were always vented outside anyway. A few months after we moved to Billings, we were able to buy a house and, once again, the dryer was my private sauna.
     The laundry room in the house we have now has no room to lay the vent hose on the floor, so in the winter when it is vented inside, I sit on top of the dryer where the hose vents out and, just like when I was a girl I bask and dream and sometimes sing. I intend to continue as long as I'm able to climb up there. Now that I'm older and gravity is stronger, I keep a little stool handy to make up for what time has taken away. But time cannot take away what those times with the dryer gave to me, warm memories.
     The laundry room is semi-private but real estate atop the dryer is limited, so my time in my sauna is my own. Unlike using the spa, there is no stripping or showering required, and drying clothes is something that has to be done anyway, so the time isn't totally wasted. Reed and I will most likely continue to be contentedly incompatible about being in heat, but I believe being comfortably different is a key to a lasting marriage--and most friendships. Reed can continue to be in hot water, while I remain full of hot air.