The new shower accoutrements are a mixed bag. On the one hand, when I sit for the first time there is a cushion there to rest my back on. That is nice. I never laid back like this before, or at least not very often, because of the coldness of the surface of the tub. Yeah, I know, sitting on a cold tub is a third world problem, not here. But the cushion is nice little flourish… until it gets wet. It seems unavoidable that my wielding of the shower head will get water on the cushion. Even though the water is hot enough it still makes the cushion cold. So I’m back to the old condition of leaning back and, after it being dry and warm, the cushion is now wet and cold and oh, how I suffer. So the trick is to choreograph my use of the shower head so that no water blasts at the cushion, which of course is directly behind me. But the 9-foot long shower hose is causing more problems than it solved. In fact I’m not sure what problems I thought this extended-length hose would solve, except for having it closer to my body when I lie back on the cushion. But that creates the hard-to-avoid problem of dousing the cushion with shower water, making it cold and damp, not soft and warm. SO much to think about now. THe extra length hose will be handy for hanging myself but other than that I think it might be best to just go back to the 6-foot piece. The bathroom, already small to begin with, now feels cluttered and claustrophobic. Twoels hanging from the curtain rod, ample objects next to the tub meant to be within easy reach but really just causing a feeling of mental furniture filling my head like a storage closet. Next to the tub is the electric razor, a roll of Charmin, a small bottle of lube, the 2 pieces of carpet, and now the 6-foot hose lies on the floor in a sort of limbo, awaiting the decision to redeploy it or let it sit in storage. Even sitting has started to feel cluttered. I gues that’s just symptomatic of everything else. Sitting had changed the whole feeling of showering, from strict and boarded to calm and grounded. It opened up parts of the tub surface that would have been untouched while standing. It felt like a canvas more than a surface. Now that I think of it, maybe the 9-foot hose contributes to the claustrophobia. Its length has advantages. I can place it at the end of the tub where my butt lands and, while warning up the water I also warm up the surface on which I sit, preventing that horrible, harrowing, insufferable feeling of sitting my soft butt on a cold surface. But the downside is that sometimes the water heats up to scalding, and sitting on that surface is not recommended. So I have to cool it down by lowering the water temperature and spraying the surface again for a couple of minutes. It can take that long for the very heat-conducive bathrtub surface to cool. Warmer weather is coming so the surface will likely not be so frigidly cold as it gets in the winter.