Showers and Shops


The hubby came into the bedroom Friday morning. "It's exactly 0 degrees [F] outside," he announced, rubbing his hands together with glee (we Brits are still suckers for this extreme US weather). I, on the other hand, was thinking about the freezing cold 3 minute shower I was about to have to take.

I prized myself from under the warm duvet and scuttled to the bathroom, asking the hubby if he'd time me while I was in there. "I'm not allowed to be in the shower for more than 3 minutes to save water," I said.

"Well, about bloody time," he started, clearly about to launch into a tirade. "Talk about a waste of water. You..."

"Yes, yes, I know," I interrupted. "I take long showers and that's bad and you're a saint, it's all on the blog." I thought to myself, this blog is great - we no longer need to actually have arguments; I can just direct the hubby online to read about why he's wrong (although on this occasion of course he's not).

I hopped into the (lovely, warm) shower and started lathering up. I washed and rinsed the shower gel off, then washed my face. As I was finishing that, the hubby announced my first minute was up. This wasn't going too badly; I'd had plenty of time so far. Then I shaved my armpits. "Two minutes," yelled the hubby. This was easy. As it wasn't a hair-washing day, I was practically done. However I could see that I would've seriously struggled to get my hair washed and conditioned within the time limit so decided that, rather than languish in the shower for my full time quota, I'd save the remainder to put towards a longer shower on a hair-washing day.


I grudglingly turned the tap of with my foot. "Finished," I shouted.


"2 minutes 40 seconds," came the reply, as I hopped up and down with the towel wrapped around me. I rushed back to the bedroom to moisturize and dress myself in the relative warmth of Dot's radiator.

I haven't timed myself since because we went to New York Friday afternoon to check out an apartment in Park Slope. We really liked the apartment, which is upstairs from our friends Greg, Sarah and Dot's mate baby Peggy (she's a littlegreenpeg and gave Dot this giraffe which she's barely taken out of her mouth since).But more exciting to me than living on the gorgeous 1st floor of a brownstone was the prospect of living one block from, and consequently becoming members of, the famous Park Slope Food Coop.


Apparently set up in 1973 (the year I was born; does this account for my neo-hippy tendencies?) the coop is a mostly organic and fair trade supermarket you have to join before you can shop, and every member has to work two days a month in the store, whether stacking shelves, balancing the books or cleaning out the chicken coops (actullay I don't know if they have chicken coops, but anyway). Sounds like heaven to moi. I think we'll take it.