Bath Bomb EXPLOSION!
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My love of the bathtub — or the tubby, as I like to call it — goes back decades.
Prop up an iPad and a bluetooth speaker and there’s no better place to watch Monday Night Football, the World Series, or dozens of episodes of your favorite Dutch high school soap opera.
My discovery of bath bombs, however, is relatively recent. Adding a little bit of fizz with a hint of lavender or grapefruit to a bath? Well, that sounds quite lovely.
But they don’t come without some, er, surprises.
Last year, a friend gave me an Intergalactic bath bomb for Christmas. Here’s the description:
Ever wonder what bathing in deep space would be like? Invite the cosmos into your tub with this interstellar bomb. An awesome mix of refreshing peppermint and neon colors will send your mood rocketing, while popping candy takes you on a trip around the Milky Way. Before you leap too far, rogue layers of vetivert and cedarwood bring you back to earth.
Invite the cosmos into your tub?! Yes, please. I dropped it in and watched it dissolve into a swirl of blues and pinks.
After a delightful soak, I stepped out of the tub. Before I wrapped the towel around my waist, I noticed that my skin had turned black and blue, like a mosaic of bruises.
But the real surprise came the next day at work.
“Um, what’s on your face?” My coworker asked.
“What’s on your face,” I replied. (I’m great with witty comebacks.)
“You’re all glittery.”
“What are you talking about?” As I lifted my hands to touch my face, I noticed they were sparkling too.
I had discovered the Intergalactic’s secret ingredient (and obvious source of its cosmic power): Glitter.
It took a week before I finally got rid of it all.
—
Lately, Paige and her friends have become quite creative — baking cookies, sewing costumes and, most importantly, making bath bombs.
Yesterday she brought home a peppermint bomb. Though not my favorite scent, I told her I’d gladly test it out.
I’ve used a few homemade bath bombs in my day and they usually lack the force of their store-bought counterparts. But not this one.
I dropped it into the water and it started bubbling at full strength, and the scent was just as powerful. So strong, in fact, it smelled like an entire peppermint factory had blown up inside the tub. (Also filling the entire house with a peppermint-flavored haze.)
Then something else started happening. The fizzing turned to tingling. Then the tingling turned to warming. And then the warming turning to burning.
Like fire burning. Like a tub of Ben Gay being poured into every orifice of your body. That kind of burning.
Had it truly come to this? Had my beloved tubby — my place of comfort, my place of solace — turned against me?
There was only place I could go to rid myself of the peppermint explosion and its skin-burning aftermath. The most common and lowliest of all places: The shower.
Oh, how the tables had turned.
I may never bathe again.