Saturday rituals

It's saturday, the last one in October. Not that the month necessarily matters. Saturdays are saturdays, and, as with other days/months or every other way to measure time, its own rhythms and rituals.

"Rituals?" you might be thinking. "For a saturday?"

Yes. Think about it: if you have a weekday job, then weekends are for other things than working. My neighbor lives for yard work, which he has done for years, starting with Saturday mornings and not quitting until Sunday afternoon. Other men of a certain age, status or inclination, hit the golf course. Women might get the washer and dryer going for the big laundry of the week, garden, or other housekeeping or relaxation. (Believe me - housekeeping is not relaxtion, unless someone enjoys it.) Kids, freed from the restraints of school, might sleep in.

But the punchline is that yes, there are rituals associated with different days.

One of mine is an occasional bubble bath. (Okay, way too much info, right? You relax your way, I'll relax mine.) It might be moved to Sunday mornings, but when I do decide to relax this way, it's almost always on a Saturday morning.

I'd lived in this house for several years before getting into the routine. Then, after a very stressful week, a friend mentioned that it might help me relax without costing a small fortune. (The same male friend had me over for dinner a few evenings later, showing me around his half of the duplex he rented, fixing a huge pot of spaghetti and pork chops. I didn't bother telling him that I was a beginning vegetarian; if someone fixes you dinner in an effort to be nice when you're having a rough time, it's best to eat what he or she is fixing, unless there are underlying health reasons not to. Just saying...Afterwards, we listened to tapes and records, mainly Rolling Stones and Bob Seger, which we danced around to. Let's just say that whenever I see pictures of Kokopelli, the "mystical Anasazi flute player (http://www.kokopelli.com/)," I think of Dennis, as that was how he danced, sort-of bent over, but with a kind-of mystical joy.)

Anyway, someone had left several bottles of bubble bath at my place, saying that she had no plans to use them, and they were mine to use or pass along. A hot bubble bath did seem in order - the first one in this house, though I'd lived here for almost three years - so I ran the hottest water I could stand and dumped an almost obscene amount of bubble bath into the water.

Now, instead of doing this on a random evening, it's Saturday morning. I used to run it just as the Women's Show on WMNF started on Saturday mornings, the radio plugged into the wall socket across the bathroom.

(The Women's Show is now relegated from 3:00 - 4:00 p.m. on Thursdays, as opposed to the two-hour slot it once held. An unrepentant feminist, I still listen...) (For those who don't live in the Tampa Bay area, and who are therefore unable to tune to 88.5 on the FM dial, you can hear 'MNF at .)

I still grab my glasses, a set of OTC readers, the latest Ms. Magazine and the latest issue or two of Vegetarian Times and veg out in the steamy, blubbly tub. Sometimes, Drexie Calabah, one of my two cats, pushes her way into the bathroom. I'm not sure if she wants to hang out with me or enjoy the sauna effect in the small room.

By the time I'm done soaking and washing (except for my hair; that requires turning the shower on at the end, since my hair is too long for washing in the bath), I usually sink into the tub, almost up to my ears, listening to the bubbles bursting, sounding similar to a bowl of Rice Krispies. Then, water out, showered off, hair washed, I head out wearing my most comfortable jeans and tee-shirt to fix French toast.

Happy Saturday...