Spa Times

Thankfully, after a somewhat stressful week, things are calming down. True, our irrigation is still non-existent in the backyard, but the rain has taken care of most of the watering chores. My yard still looks a mess (unavoidable with a major project), but I bought some nice annuals and dressed things up a bit. And best of all, our spa is in place and in use...even when our stress levels soar, help is just a few steps away in the form of hot water and 71 massaging jets.

My husband and I have quickly gotten in the habit of two soaks a day. We take a quick afternoon dip, then cap off the night with a pre-bed soak. I enjoy the "disco lights," which cycle through various colors, casting an glow over the spa that ranges from eerie (red) to calming (blue and violet). It even has an orange phase that my husband, with his Dreamscicle-walled office, loves.

So far, the water has remained clear, although the pH has measured high for the last two days. I've been elected as the "Pool Girl," so it's up to me to maintain some sort of balance and to keep the spa from turning into a murky, algae-infected swampland. Thankfully, it has an ozinator...I'm not sure what that means, except that it's a critical component that keeps the darned thing clean. Between that and chlorine, mixed in with two products descriptively named "Spa Up" and "Spa Down," I'm hoping to keep the water at least semi-sanitary.

At night, the mosquitos quickly seek us out the moment we head out to soak, but we ward them off with the misters. That was an optional feature, and I'm so glad that we got it; otherwise, we'd be bloodless, itchy lumps of flesh (at least from the shoulders up) when we finished our soaks.

The spa has seven seats, each offering a different configuration of therapy jets, so we typically work our way around to each of them. Sometimes I flash back to volleyball games in junior high: "Rotate!"

When the cats know we're outside, they watch plaintively from the back window. Stitch and Farquaad enjoy going outside (Tooncinator would rather hide under the bed), but we only allow them out under strict supervision. Since it's too hard to keep an eye on wandering felines while wallowing in watery bliss, we leave them on house arrest while we're in the hot tub. Thus we have to put up with the guilt as those wide kitty eyes (remember Puss in Boots from "Shrek"?) stare at us accusingly.

Today, our afternoon swim was pre-empted by rainstorm after rainstorm. We got home a little later than usual because we had to run to downtown Orlando after church, and then we stopped at Cafe Tu Tu Tango for a late lunch on the way home. It's always hard to decide what to order, but today it was much easier than usual. The daily specials were so tempting that we got one of each. That's the great thing about a tapas (all appetizer) restaurant...you get to try several things.

We had smoked tomato soup with five-cheese grilled cheese sandwich, salmon with saffron crust and onion flan, and beef spring rolls. Dessert was an intriguing variation on a banana split, including banana nut ice cream.

Hopefully this evening the rain will let up and we can slip in the spa for a quick soak.

Learn more about Celebration on my website: www.celebrationinfo.com