the bathroom is warm, but the tiles are cold...

So when I wake up...the house keeps warm enough. My room doesn't get too hot, even though I keep the heater on. But the kitchen and the bathroom are downright toasty. I usually read a bit in the evening at the kitchen table or drink a Kotayk beer and watch an episode of season 1 of Dexter on my laptop (thank my mother for this new addiction addition). And the bathroom is nice enough. Only there is no shower stall, per se. There is a screen hanging across the middle of the square-shaped bathroom. The whole room is tile. One side of the screen has the toilet and sink. The other side of the screen is the shower. One of the moveable-kind you see in europe, hanging off the wall. The floor is slightly concave, just barely, so the shower dribbles toward the drain in the middle of the room. There is a broom handle with a large squeegee on the end of it to squeegee the floor after you shower so the next person that comes in to pee or brush their teeth doesn't get all soaked or slip. So you squeegee the floor, dragging the water toward the center, into the drain. Thats all fine. I can do that. I don't even miss having a shower door. And the soap here is pretty good. And like I said, the bathroom is real warm. So thats nice.
But showering itself is the fun part.
Hot water heaters in Armenia...hmmm...how to put it?...they umm...leave a little to be desired (for an American, I concede). The water is very hot. Can get blisteringly so. But there is very little controlling the temperature. And the hot water runs out. Like in 4 minutes. If you run the water at a high pressure? 2 minutes. So what that means for ol' E.J. is that I try to get my body soaked within those first four minutes. Then I turn the shower off and soap up. I think my father called this an Army shower. I guess the army might have rationed water? Anyways. You have to let the water warm up again before rinsing. And if you keep it running, it doesn't warm up. Just gets colder an colder. Fortunately, it only takes about a minute and a half for the water heater to heat new water up to a decent temperature. But if you can imagine, despite the fact that I've said twice that the room heats up nice, the tile floor always stays nice and cold. So now, you may not be surprised that I seldom require the full minute and a half to actually soap up. More like a frantic 45 seconds. Try as I might, I just can't get my brain to convince my body that soaping up faster will not make the water get hotter faster. So then, after 45 seconds, I am soaped up. Bar of soap back in its tray. And nothing to do but wait for the water to warm up...

Now, a lesser man might admit defeat. Allow this daily experience to demoralize him. Dread the shower. Avoid it. Start smelling worse and worse with the lack of self-care.
Now I can't say I don't hesitate before committing to the deed some mornings. And have no doubt that I oftentimes spend this moment of hesitation whistfully thinking to the next long, hot shower I will experience, which will likely be in June, under Payton's rainforest-rains showerhead thingamabob, many thousands of miles away in Boston, Mass.
But I digress! So what is the solution? How do you spend this second 45 seconds? How do you get through this daily trial? you ask...
Well, on my second day in the apartment, I was struck by genius. Simple. I make a pot of English Breakfast tea each morning before the shower. My saving grace, a cup of hot tea, sits expectantly next to my toothbrush through the first 4 minutes and 45 seconds of the shower, ready to save the day with its steamy, caffeinated goodness. Now, I admit, embracing a hot glass container in a soapy hand, whilst in the bare no less, might not be the safest thing to do every morning. Potential for the slipping and the breaking and the burning and the cutting...OI VEY!
But its the best plan I've come up with so far. Let me know if you've got anything better.