The Not So Hot Tub

We took a cruise a few years ago and I will never forget "Goofy's Not So Hot Tub" for children on deck. I think Goofy's hot tub was warmer than ours is right now.

I'm sitting here waiting for the service man and then I really need to get into the office. The hot tub is on our deck, or I should say IN our deck, as it sits flush with the deck floor. It's an older tub, about ten years old, and nothing fancy. It was back in 1998 a Home Depot "special." We would never have bought a hot tub, but it came with the house, and like a puppy, it requires attention. For all intensive purposes, it makes hot bubbly water, and that's about it. These newer models I've seen in hot tub stores have digital displays, TV's, stereos, even WiFi in them. Ours doesn't have more than a set of bench seats around the edge, and maybe ten jets (new models have hundreds of jets). But these are merely accessories. The prime purpose of a hot tub is to keep the water hot, and ours doesn't.

Every once in a while it stops heating. The water is all swirly in anticipation, but the little red light stays solid, calling (I'd like to think DESPERATELY) for the damn heater to kick in. John, my personal home technologist, rigged the hot tub up to a heat sensor and it records the heat in the tub wirelessly on our home weather station (don't ask) and into a chart. We can watch the water heat. Except right now it isn't heating. In fact, the hot tub is paging me every 30 minutes to remind me that the temperature has dropped below 90 degrees and won't I please come and help it.

That's right, my husband has the thing tied into the cell system. It pages us when in distress. Starting, say, 3am when this problem occurred and every half hour after.

It emails me, too, in case I'm not paying it enough attention.

See, it really is like a puppy. A super, high tech, 82F puppy.