Well my day did not go as planned today. After getting up and just having had my first coffee substitute for the day, Heinz rang me up to tell me that Gertrud and he had decided to go to town today. Gertrud was apparantly quite excited to get out of the house for the day as she had been stuck indoors for practically the whole week and was getting cabin fever. Heinz figured they would be gone for an hour or two and that I could still come by to work on the blinds if there was time. However, knowing Heinz and Gertrud as I do, I knew the day was done. Heinz absolutely cannot go anywhere for just an hour. He gets stuck talking to all the clerks and so time passes and the day is done.
He said they would be going for a few groceries and just getting out of the house for the day because the weather was nice and Gertrud would enjoy it.
Now Gertrud has been having some troubles in what I like to refer to as the "nether" regions and so I advised Heinz that there were these things called sitzbaths into which one puts some epsom salts and warm water and then sits into it for roughly fifteen minutes several times a day if one wants to and it provides relief for all sorts of ailments. I went into great detail to explain that they fit onto the toilet and are very handy and even told him the price range to expect and where to go to find one.
So off the two of them went. They did not return home until supper time just as I had expected upon which Heinz called to let me know how things had transpired.
He told me disparingly how he had tried very hard to get a sitzbath for Gertrude all to no avail. They had visited the pharmacy I had recommended and found two things which might fit the description. One was a round plastic frame, which basically made the toilet seat higher and cost about sixty dollars. It didn't look right to Heinz and the price was more than I had said, so that was out. Then the other thing he described was simply a plastic thing which looked like a bowl that fit onto the toilet seat and cost about twelve dollars. Now this, to Heinz was simply outrageous to charge twelve dollars for a piece of plastic though it did seem to fit the bill better. However he wasn't sure if it was the right thing, so he left it there. According to Heinz, the bathwater would get cold way too fast and possibly cause even more problems. Howver he didn't know about the plastic bag that goes with the sitzbath and is to be filled with hot water which can then be gradually added to the bath as it cools off.
So he decided to go across the road to the mobility center which would surely have the electric version that would keep the water warm for a lot longer period of time. The mobility center was closed however and so after scouring several more stores trying to find an electric sitzbath Heinz and Gertrud came home empty handed other than having bought the epsom salts.
So in telling me his shopping story, I told Heinz that he had found the right thing to start with at the pharmacy. Well, he told me that he didn't like the thought of the water cooling down so fast and that he had some good wooden boards in the basement, which, if he were to cut them just right and modify one of the three slowcookers that he and Gertrud owned he could make a wonderful substitute that would work much better than the versions sold in the stores.
Soo, after taking a very deep breath and trying not to picture the outcome too closely, I vehemently advised against doing any such thing. I tried hard to convince him of the virtues of the current version available and that it was indeed worth the twelve dollar investment for the comfort alone. Heinz however is a tough cookie to convince differently when he is on a mission.
Feeling beaten, I finally remembered to tell him that the epsom salts can be used in bathwater just as effectively, however he would have to help Gertrude in and out of the tub, whereas with the sitzbath she would have been able to do things entirely on her own and at her own convenience.
In the end, I had to leave Heinz in his invention mode and hope that I can buy a sitzbath for Gertrude, before she gets either splinters or accidentally electrocuted in a slowcooker.
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