Adventures in Life

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When The Missus Herself and Your Humble Scribe stay at The Nuke's we have our own little hideaway in the basement. What is normally their movie watching room (even has a popcorn machine) becomes our bedroom. We even have our own bathroom just outside the room. It's very nice.

However it has one amenity that I have yet to use. Well, use intentionally that is.

'Tis a bidet.

This is not the traditional French standalone bidet but is of the "convert your toilet to a combo toilet/bidet" set up. It's very nice, the thing I like about it is the heated seat, very nice in the dead of winter it is.

However ...

So Monday night, The Missus Herself taps me on the shoulder, awakening me from "almost asleep" to something approaching consciousness.

"Umph, er, whazzup?"

"I think I left the rice cooker on."

Checking my watch, I see that it is past midnight.

"And you want me to do what at this hour?"

"Um, just thought you wanted to know."

Well honestly, I did not.

Now normally the rice cooker is pretty much on all of the time. I mean it's used to cook the rice, then maintain the rice in an edible condition for a few days. (Before marrying The Missus Herself I had no idea these things existed, having grown up on Minute Rice and Uncle Ben's - the rice cooker version of rice is, in my opinion, far superior.)

So to my half asleep mind, this did not seem like such a bad thing, I mean we're only gone for a week, right?

Then, as I tried in desperation to return to sleep, many horrid scenarios began to play out in my tired head. Ranging from the house burning down, to the kitchen smelling like burned rice for eternity, to the optimum scenario of nothing happening at all.

Needless to say, my sleep was fitful for the remainder of the night.

Around 0530 local I awakened to answer the call of Nature. Upon taking a seat (my aim ain't what it used to be) my brain said, "Hhmm, why isn't the seat warm?"

Reaching down for the controller (bear in mind, I'm half-asleep and not wearing my spectacles) I press something, hear a noise coming from beneath me, then the next thing I know ...

My butt is being "entertained" by a stream of warm water. Not an unpleasant sensation by any means, however it was rather, shall we say "unexpected."

Now I had no idea that the controller could be detached from its wall-mounted position. The one I was used to had a remote control thingie that sat in its own holder on the wall. The new one appears to be permanently affixed to the wall.

At some point in the process, my brain awakened. Though still distracted by the continuing stream of warm water against my nether regions, as it were, I eventually worked out, logically, that as the controls could not be seen or understood from the wall mount, it must somehow be detachable.

Carefully, not wanting to damage Tuttle's fine work in installing the new bidet seat, I gently pulled on the unit, which separated cleanly from the wall. Now that I could actually see the controls I managed to stop the water and turn the seat heat back on.

After that I returned to bed, to remember the original reason for me not sleeping. So I sent my next door neighbor a text asking if she would be so kind as to proceed to my dwelling and ascertain whether or not the rice cooker was indeed on. If it was, would she be so kind as to simply unplug it? Though there are clear instructions on the unit telling one how to switch it off, the aforementioned instructions are in Korean.

My neighbor doesn't speak Korean.

Later I heard back, the rice cooker had indeed been on, and was now unplugged. Not in an MTV sort of way but in a disconnected from a power source sort of way.

I lost sleep but on the upside, I now know how the bidet works.

Kinda cool.

Editor's Note: I do have a new vignette in mind but it involves war and I'm feeling rather peaceful these days. Not ready to write about war and death at this point in time. I'm sure I'll get back to it. Just not today.