Shower time

Every time I turn on my computer, this is the image that greets me:

And it makes me smile every time. My mum doesn’t often get all the credit she deserves. She took this photo, and I give her all the credit: nice photo, mum. In this picture, left to right is: me, Ebony, Nikki and Tegan. My three sisters and I. They’re pretty cool and I miss them a lot so the photo makes me happy. Sometimes it makes me cry a little, like now, but only because I miss them.

Today was a good day. Because I didn’t get paralytic drunk last night I didn’t have a hangover like everyone else. So I got to sleep in and reap the benefits of not having a hangover when everyone else did. Nothing happened and everyone went slow and I took full advantage of it. I got to plan my day like this:

Wake up at 7am, know I can lay in bed for hours. Get up at 8:30am and get dressed. Decide what to have for breakfast. Can’t decide so walk to the spring to get more water for my solar shower and my water bottle. Cook pasta for breakfast because I decide – what the hell, I’m on ‘holidays’ and I can eat pesto with pasta (my preference over eggs) for breakfast if I want! Then I cook breakfast, eat breakfast while sitting in the sun. Then I read some more of my Marie Claire magazine a friend brought me back from Australia. I then planned to wash my face and hands and then write a blog or two and edit the photos I took yesterday. My plan worked perfectly and I wasn’t interrupted once. It was lovely. So then, with even more time to myself, I read more magazine and book and I went for a walk up the hill near the spring and did some make-shift yoga. I tried to meditate but I think I need to practice some more. below: making my breakfast in our cabin; the hill that I walked up today

 

 

And then I read some more and decided maybe I’d attempt to have a shower because I felt disgusting, and the water in my solar heater had warmed enough to justify it. So then my next plan was to finish a chapter of my book, set up a makeshift shower cubicle (there’s no privacy here and the toilet is two slats of wood over a deep hole in the ground) and then make some dinner.

Still, no interruptions. I got some quizzical looks while I was using dad’s blue poncho-cum-picnic rug-cum-shower privacy screen to make the shower cubicle but no one interrupted me

I was a little scared of the shower screen blowing down as it wasn’t fastened tightly and everyone was playing cards within view. But it was now or never. I half chickened out and then was grossed out by my dirtiness so decided to go for it. Stuff it, who cares if they see me butt-naked, it might give them something else to talk about.

So away I went. I took some photos of the aftermath for you. I was not exposed, thankfully. But the location of my shower cubicle meant that someone walking past one side meant they’d get a pretty good view of naked Sally if they were walking in the right direction. Of course, someone was and I’m positive they got a good view.  Don’t care. I’m CLEAN!

 

 

Above: the solar shower (after my shower); the side of my makeshift ‘cubicle’ where it wasn’t so private; inside my cubicle – poncho was slung up to the door on the right of the photo. Solar shower was slung over my shoulder.

So, to shower, I had to cart the water from the spring – which was heavy in that funny little plastic bag. I sat it in the sun for 8 hours. The handle on it doesn’t hold its own weight so I couldn’t hang it from the wall of our cabin. I had to hold it. So I washed my legs with the shower head attached, with the water bag hitched over my shoulder. Then I took the shower head attachment off which left me with the little tap. I held the bag over my head so I could wash my top half. It fell down a few times because holding 15L water above your head gets heavy. That meant the bag got really dirty which meant I copped it too. But none of it mattered. I lathered up as best I could, washed it off and dried off. I only used about half of the 20L of water and it’s still warm and I feel like I’ve wasted it. I think I might use it as a warm-water bottle for my feet tonight as it gets cold here.

Now there’s a little mouse in my cabin and I want him to go away because if he eats my food I won’t have anything for another two days. Everyone’s playing cards again but I don’t want to because I don’t understand most card games, I get too competitive and I’m really just enjoying my own time even though I know they’re all judging me for not joining in.