No, It's Not Raining, or My Perfect Storm

The Culprit!

O.K., I probably shouldn’t admit to making the mess I made this week, but it is pretty funny if you didn’t have to clean it up. What happened? I took a bath, that’s all. At least that’s all it should have been, but I made one mistake that I was aware of but didn’t take the time to fix. That right there was my undoing. Let me explain.

We remodeled our master bathroom not long ago and put in a soaker tub. You know, the kind that is so deep you have a headrest and even armrests about half way down. We love that it can be filled up high, immersing you in warm water for a nice, restful soak. We even put in a hand-held spray next to our heads so it’s easy to rinse hair or just run water over your back occasionally like a showerhead. How could I screw up here, you may ask? Easy. I jumped into the tub in my perpetual hurry, and as I swung a leg over the edge to step into the tub, I was aware that I had accidentally kicked the hand-held sprayer. My fatal mistake was not bothering to check it to see that it was still where it was supposed to be. So what happened?

This is where it actually gets pretty funny and I’m embarrassed to tell you what I did. I’m relaxing in the tub as it is filling, enjoying the hot water on my legs. My cat is hanging over the edge and stepping down on the armrest as he always does. He thinks my bath is his watering hole and has quite a fascination with it. He hits me in the shoulder until I cup water in my hand and let him drink from it. I tell you this in self-defence because I want you to understand that I was distracted as the tub filled.

Oddly, I thought I was hearing rain, but when I’d look over my shoulder to the outside through the French doors beside the tub, I could see no rain. I kept hearing it, though, so finally I shut off the water to listen more closely. Nothing. The rain sound was gone. Must have been mistaken, right? I turned the water back on, sat back to relax, only to discover more of the same rain sound. This time, I sat up straight and turned fully around to see what was going on. What did I discover? Sigh. I finally saw the hand-held sprayer was spraying water straight out onto the bathroom floor! When the hand held sprayer is in use, shutting it off is accomplished by turning off the water at the tap. Apparently, that had not happened when last in use, so while water was filling the tub, it was also “raining” on the bathroom floor, and had been doing so for probably, oh, 10 minutes. By the time I got out of the tub and started cleaning it up, I found that it had run alongside the tub where it was tiled and into the carpeted closet where it was filling the area at an alarming clip! Yeah, not good.

So, while I have to laugh at myself for not figuring it out sooner, it was a “perfect storm” (pardon the pun) of incidents that got me into the fix. Now, after several days of running a fan and finally borrowing a dehumidifier, I think my closet will survive. Note to self: when it “rains” in the bathroom, it’s a good idea to check it our sooner rather than later!

Live and learn, my friends, live and learn.