Rub-a-Dub-Scrub

“Use it or lose it,” the old saying goes.  Solve crossword puzzles, or lose the cognitive ability necessary to work them.  Bend and stretch your body, or expect it to stiffen like a board.  Use what you have, or be willing to give it up.

I’d like to tell a story to illustrate this.

It was been past time for the bi-annual cleaning of the hot tub.  I’d threatened to pass the tub-cleaning torch to some younger, more agile tub-cleaning fairy (who this might be, I don’t know), but the realities of that happening were slim.  So after dinner last night I sweet-talked myself (“You can do it…do it or lose it”) and set out to the deck with rags, a horrible citrus-smelling tub-cleaning solution, and determination.

This is a multi-stage project, an exercise in repeated body bending (think wrestler-type positions without a human opponent) while perched on tiptoes on the edges of the tub’s seats (balancing while squatting and twisting upside-down), then rub-a-dub-scrubbing in this position. Throw in some fingertip dexterity exercises (poking fingers into the openings of the jets) while crouched and knotted like a double half-hitch and you’ve got the picture.

It is acrobatic, time-consuming work, and seemed especially tedious since I was working in the evening with uninvited company: droves of mosquitoes.  Yes.  Frenzied.  Hungry.  Skeeters.

After what seemed an eternity, the sun finally dropped below the horizon and I eyed the empty, sparkling-clean tub through a buzzing cloud of blood-sucking insects.  Success! I groaned (literally), climbed out (creakily), and stretched (painfully) into an upright position.  Then I ran (swiftly) for shelter from the relentless Culicidae.  Done.

Today, while filling the tub with water and nursing a few sore muscles (I demand a water massage as retribution), I reminded myself sweetly that it is perfectly normal and usual, the standard thing, to have after-aches from contorting my body into a pretzel for over an hour.  This is what keeps me strong and able.  But more important than justification or inspiration, I’m feeling truly grateful for a body that still allows me to “use it” to perform this task at my age. 

Cleaning fairies?  Bah! Such an overrated luxury!  Although I’m not against keeping my antennae out just in case one happens by.