Stewing in Your Own Juices

As many of you know, this weekend included the arrival of a very special new addition to our family: the hot tub. I have been waiting many years to make this dream of mine a reality and now - ta dah! - dream actualized. Very exciting. And yes, the first soak made it incredibly clear to me why I have wanted this for so long. What is more lovely than taking a super hot bath and being naked in your own backyard as powerful jets massage away your upper back tension? It's all glorious and heavenly. Until the water starts to smell. Really really bad. 

It turns out the pool store I bought my chemicals from (and relied on to fully instruct me in all ways of hot tub care and maintenence) seemed to have someone under qualified working the desk the moment I popped in to buy my chemicals. Bad advice and lack of my usual internet prowess lead to an unfortunate build up of imbalanced spa chemicals after our first three days of Roman bath-like hot tub use. It turns out that the hot tub is not actually a mini pool for kids to jump in at their leisure (much to their dismay), and you can only sausage so many people into the tub so many times a day before you really need to manage the situation. Otherwise you end up with a tub that smells eerily like the YMCA locker room on a Saturday afternoon, and water that resembles alka seltzer. Not good. 

The good news is that all hope is not lost. I returned to the pool store today and replenished my supply of chemicals, and insisted on a full length tutorial from a new and seemingly knowledgable salesperson. I got home and spent the better part of the afternoon rectifying the situation, and the water is now sparkling clean and smells like water. Lesson learned and I'll be back in full on soaking action tomorrow.