What's Your Idea of Luxury?

I began thinking about the concept of luxury after reading a recent post by Lady Bracknell. Here’s her conclusion:

She has reached the decision just this afternoon that the ultimate in sybaritism and luxury would be to be able to afford to put on a brand new pair of pyjamas every day, fresh from the packet, and complete with those creases down the sleeves which can never be replicated when dashing away with a smoothing iron at a later date. Nothing can compare with the tactile pleasure of fresh, new cotton jersey against the skin.

I think this must be a fairly common theme. For Ed O’Neill, my chairman at USC, it was a new pair of socks every day. New clothes don’t appeal to me at all: they are often scritchy scratchy and stiff, no match for soft, translucent garments smelling faintly of fabric softener. For luxury, I have to look elsewhere.

I set down some ground rules for my definition of luxury. My choice has to be something faintly possible, but most unlikely. That rules out two items I talk of wistfully. One is an endless supply of postage stamps of all denominations and designs. Given a little advanced planning and some careful budgeting, I could probably achieve an approximation of that goal. My second, rather modest, desire concerns bubble bath. I know it exists in this country, but Grosse Pointe is not the epicenter of bath products. I scoured CVS and (although they now appear to sell some Boots products on-line) all I could come up with in the way of bubble bath featured a picture of Curious George wearing a sombrero. Again, meticulous detective work will allow me to find a source and bubble bath will cease to fall into the luxury category.

Eureka! This is the time of year when I like to get up early and enjoy the quiet and cool of the morning. I read the paper and drink copious amounts of coffee. I take my blood pressure medicine, squeeze into my gardening shoes and go outside to work. It usually isn’t long before the coffee and the pills (the diuretic kind) work their way through my system with the obvious result. I wait way too long to go through the annoying process of removing my gardening shoes and going back inside. So my idea of luxury? An outside privy! This rendering by Martha Hinson shows how adorable it could look in the corner of the yard. I wonder whether I need a bulding permit?