For Thursday, Feb 18, 1999 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 723 words

Spa-ing partners

My doggone kids bought a hot tub. Do they understand the sort of pressure that puts on me? Now my wife wants one, badly. She's always wanted one, just not badly.

Early last week our 25-year-old daughter, Kristi, called and said, "We're thinking of buying a hot tub."

I winced and said, "That's great. You guys would really put it to good use." I hoped it was a whim which would fade. I don't begrudge them a tub. I just knew that one tub would probably become two tubs.

Later that week she called again. "We did it. We just bought a hot tub. It's being installed." I fielded this call as well and wondered how long I could keep Susan from learning about it. Not forever, I decided, and told her later that night.

Friday morning at 7 a.m. Chad, our son-in-law, called and said, "Listen to this…" Then he held the phone up to the whirring pump beneath his hot tub. "Now guess this sound…" he said and I clearly recognized splashing. "Now listen to this," he said. "Ahhhhhhhhh. That's the sound of me climbing into our new hot tub with a cup of coffee and the morning paper."

"Who's on the phone?" my wife asked from beside me in bed.

"Ah, it's the Chronicle sales people again," I said. "Darn them."

"At seven a.m.? I don't think so."

I confessed and we shared the call, which concluded with an invitation for us to spend Valentine's Day in our kids' hot tub in Sacramento.

We did a lot of running around in Benicia that Friday. That afternoon we played back our phone messages. On the tape were a series of short, cryptic calls from Kristi and Chad: more splashing and moaning and clinking of wine glasses and such.

Susan spent the twilight hour in our backyard, hands on hips, surveying possible tub sites.

I came out and helped. I had to admit to it, we needed a tub. We couldn't let ourselves be Jones-ed by our own children, fresh out of college.

Buying a hot tub is definitely not a new idea. We've been talking about it for ten years with nothing to show for it but money and patio space. The kids made up their minds in a few days and made the plunge. Now they're in hot water and we're not. All that has to change.

We drove up on Saturday in the pounding rain. The kids were pretty pruned out from being in the tub most of the last 24 hours, but they were in the tub, which was nestled under the back-deck awning, out of the rain, hot and inviting.

We spent the rest of the weekend in and out of hot water. Ahhhhhh.

Here's why we don't have a tub yet: I overheat too easily. After about 15 minutes I have to get out and cool down. I don't mind the commercial tubs with the nearby cold showers. We go about $80 worth a year to those. I also don't mind the ones with a nearby padded bed so I can crawl out and lie down once in a while.

Susan on the other hand could take her meals in a hot tub. She could have sat out through the Clinton trial bubbling in a tub. When she crawls out of a tub it takes a moment for the water to fill in her space.

I always said, "We can get a tub, dear, if we can also get a gazebo with a padded bench." That always brought the debate to a halt. It added too much to the cost and bother, so we kept postponing our convictions.

Then we hatched our newest five-year plan. That was for me to build the gazebo myself and save dough. OK, so one summer I put in a cement patio, another I built a retaining wall, another I built a bench and took out some trees, and now all I have to build is the gazebo. Then comes the tub.

Our kids just set theirs down on their back patio and turned on the garden hose. Right now, they are reading the newspaper, in the tub. Me, I'm standing out in my backyard with my hands on my hips, staring at a pile of dirt and some boards. Susan is taking a bath.