A nice relaxing bath.

The Fun Apartment, before its present incarnation, once had four rooms, in which some courageous woman raised four New York city police officers (there but for the grace. . . . ) It also used to contain the ultimate stereotype of ridiculous New York apartment living: a bathtub in the kitchen.

This was a longstanding joke, a shorthand way for people who lived in other places (with larger spaces) to say “Gasp! What savages! Aren’t we lucky not to live there? Who would want a bathtub in their kitchen?”

Who? Me!

The bathtub has not actually moved location since its days of bathing NY’s finest. It’s just been walled in. So it’s right off the kitchen. And that means that an hour before dinner every night, I can plunk two naked little boys who love the water in there while I cook dinner!

Isn’t it dangerous to leave them in the bath alone, you ask? Well, no one is ever alone at the Fun Apartment. Standing in the kitchen, I am about 6 feet away from the bathtub. So, no, it’s not terribly dangerous.

Once I discovered that I could have bathtime before dinner, and that bathtime could last 45 minutes or an hour, our dinner menu improved dramatically. I can prepare an entire dinner, involving sharp things and hot things, with no one underfoot. Granted, I am usually conversing with them, at least part of the time and they are in the water, so I don’t completely check out or wander around the rest of the apartment. But the freedom to chop onions without an accident and drain pasta without recreating the pouring of boiling oil on castle-invading-barbarian hordes is really to be recommended.

Maybe you all should consider moving your bathtubs to the kitchen. Look what you could see from your counter:

Good clean fun.

And you could see this at the same time:

Pizza night.