Marriage Crisis 2020: the Water Temperature for the Hot Tub

Hot tub operation is not as trivial as it seems

Cold(er) air has finally arrived, kicking off the 2020–2021 hot tub season. So here we are again, discord in marriage: my wife prefers a “luke warm” tub of 99 degrees, while I prefer a “reasonably hot hot tub of 101”. If you think that 2 degrees isn’t that big of a deal, you are a dolt. You probably also think that the Earth is flat, NASA never landed on the moon, and Papa John’s pizza is better than a stale piece of bread with a lot of ketchup on it. All wrong.

You might also think: “just compromise!”. You’ve never been married. Contrary to what is usually written in marriage counseling books, compromise is the Devil’s Staircase to one-sided domination. Giving in on that one degree displays a spine that is so weak that this scenario becomes very likely:

Me: “I want to watch football this Sunday.”

Wife: “I want to throw rocks at old people.”

Wife: “How about we wear football helmets and pretend that the old people are tight ends?

Me: “Damnit, she got me again…sorry Mr. McFunklord.”

The house did not come with a hot tub, and they aren’t — unlike babies — magically delivered by storks. I always knew that I had wanted a hot tub, but I’m not exactly the king of following through on things. Or properly executing them. When we moved in, I wanted to build a bar for a man cave in the basement. Twelve years later, there is a structure in our basement that is nothing more than a skeleton of 2x4s — shoddily cut — with a layer of particle board on top. It holds surplus kid toys.

But back to the hot tub…

My wife was a stay-at-home mom at the time, and was becoming increasingly annoyed at seeing me open a local hot tub dealer’s homepage, clicking on the “BLOWOUT SUPER SALE!” link, and sighing heavily before moving on to www.whytheoriolessucksobad.com. She tooks the proverbial bull by the horns, and started to captain this voyage. Luckily, by this time in our marriage, she had learned that asking me for substantive input was really just a waste of everyone’s time. With this realization, we avoided project delays like:

Wife: “What about this one? It can heat a block of ice to 100 degrees in 13.6 seconds.”

Me: “Uhh…I’ll look into it…maybe we can talk about tomorrow…that seems kind of slow…”

My wife, independently, acquired a tub that seemed suitable. It turns out, however, that simply buying a tub doesn’t get you across the finish line. You have to find a place for the tub, one that is stable and level. (I was cool with putting it in the middle of our sloped yard, and charging tourists to bathe in the Leaning Hot Tub of Suburban Maryland. That didn’t fly.)

Hot tubs also require something called “electricity” to heat the water. This seemed like a scam by Big Electric. My proposal was simple: dig a big hole, place several steel rods over it, mimicking a grill rack, and placing the tub on top. We could just make a fire underneath the tub to heat the water. The simplicity of my genius often makes me shudder. However, my wife, and several officials from state and local government agencies shot down my comet of brilliance.

In time, my wife had a portion of our patio leveled and paved. She had a capable electrician handle the power requirements. The tub was here. We plugged it in. But…what the bloody hell?! It doesn’t come with water?! It is no wonder that so many people don’t have hot tubs — the Man is trying to make it as hard as possible to get one.

Nonetheless, after we (she) cleared all of these hurdles we had a working hot tub. We (she) added a list of chemicals that read as though they were designed by a sinister scientist searching for a serum that would secure searing pain. I tried to hop in — suspicious of why my wife would want me to go first since she did all the work — but the tub is tall, and I am not flexible. Immediately, I raced to the bathroom and grabbed the footstool the kids use when brushing their teeth. Success. Hopped in, we did. It took awhile to get the chemical balance right. This resulted in several weeping sores and — inexplicably — the spontaneous creation of several multi-cell organisms. Pro tip: if you take back the cover and a blue-ish blob says “hop in, the water’s fine”, you need to readjust your chemical balance.

It was a lengthy process, but we had both done our parts: I Googled “hot tubs” and complained about things (sometimes unrelated to hot tubs). My wife got the hot tub, had it installed, and made sure everything was up to code.

Even Steven.

That partnership continues to this day. Did you know that hot tubs need to be maintained? Me neither! So, every few days I do my part and make sure that there is still water in the tub and that it is hot. My wife handles the multi-celled organisms and whatnot. I have done a good job of running the jets (there is a button labeled “jets”), and taking care of the light operations (there is button labeled “lights”). I’ve even figured out how to turn on the party lights, which are the regular lights that just annoyingly change color every so often. I guess it is supposed to start a party, but it hasn’t worked yet

I’ll give you three chances to guess what the temperature setting is on our hot tub. If you need more than two, you’re fired.

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