Skills I Really Need to Master Before I'm Ready for Life, Let Alone a PhD

Otherwise known as, the I hate myself and want to die post.

So. As a child certain skills were never explicitly added to my repertoire. I had to do a lot of dishes, for example, but I apparently never learned that when washing windows you had to wipe away ALL the moisture in order not to leave streaks... that is, I never learned this until my two-week stint as a waitress, when this lesson was just one small part of the humiliation inflicted on me daily. "You don't know how to do this?!" the owner spat, rubbing her towel around with formidable elbow grease and speaking aound her cigarette. (Another thing I didn't know to do was to put the coffee pot back UNDER the drip part on the coffee maker before you make the coffee. Otherwise, I soon learned, the coffee goes all over the floor. As you might imagine, this job I quit expeditiously as soon as I got another, as it happens on the maintenance crew at the state park, where I was hired so that I could clean the girl's shower rooms, which I did by spraying some pink stuff around then hosing the whole thing down with a high powered hose. Then the whole mess ran down a drain in the center. Easy.)

Another thing I should confess I don't know how to do is to plunge. A toilet. Like, I don't really understand the objective. I've surmised that the air bubble is maybe supposed to go down there and like, puff things through. I really don't know. But what I do know is I'm an idiot, a stone cold idiot.

The other thing I am, my husband could testify, is a harpy. For example: I've been on a kick lately where I entreat him earnestly and shrilly to help me enhance in our house a Culture of Fruitfulness, in which long hours of quiet fruitful academic or writing work happen gracefully and happily, yet dishes still get done so that in the afternoon, when I start to want to cook, I don't have to first do all last night's supper dishes before I start on today's supper.

I'm a little wigged out by the summer, you see. On one hand, it's so awesome: we have this great porch, and I can sit there and read all day. On the other hand, I'm a stupid nervous wreck, always aware of having to call the caterer and get the invitations and write a cover letter and spend time with my friend who invited me over and and and. I'm easily distracted. By the little stuff.

So take this morning. He gets up and goes to the computer, as he's addicted to Flickr and to his own popularity there. I get up and immediately begin expressing my frustration by banging cabinets, loudly running dishwater, frustratedly setting up the coffee pot. "See?" I explain. "Remember what I said about the Culture of Fruitfulness, where I don't feel like I have to cook all the dinners AND do all the dishes? Where you don't go first thing to Flickr but instead help me not to feel crazy?" I was on a roll. I was really high and mighty. "Should I call the rental company? To tell them about the tub and toilet not draining?"

Here I need to pause to recount another scene. Yesterday, a lovely Sunday, we were having the slow-drain problem and the not-flushing-all-the-way problem. Away my husband went to walk the dog. "If you need to," he said as he left, "you can always pee out back."

Now here he meant the shed, where there's a little drain one could pee right into if necessary. I, however, did not realize he meant this. Accordingly, I trotted out into the yard. It isn't fenced. There's an alley on one side, and no demarcation between our yard and the next door yard of the dead old lady. (This is not the yard where today's excavating is occurring.) In other words, private, it ain't. First I tried squatting by the clump of peonys, but then I realized that my across-the-alley neighbor was walking about her yard with a little spritzing device, spritzing her plants. So then I huddled by the tree, where she couldn't see me. From here, I could look directly across yards and into kitchen windows of at least two houses.

Oh well, I thought. And did what I had to.

When I told CV what I'd done, he could not stop laughing. "I meant IN THE SHED!" he gasped. And then for fifteen minutes, everytime he'd start to calm down, he'd apparently have an image of me squatting gingerly in our yard and he'd start laughing all over again.

So today, when I asked him if I should call the rental company, and he said "no I was going to wait," I got really mad. "Oh, sure!" I said. "We know there's roots in the pipes. You're going to shower, the pipes are going to back up, and I'M the one who's going to have to find someplace to pee!"

Okay, so he showers. It doesn't drain. We kiss and make up. He leaves. I call the rental company. They say, no problem, we'll put in the order.

So there I am, with a cleanish-bathroom, a non-overflowed toilet, a finally-drained tub. There I am with a righteous indignation, high hopes for the world. There I am with my confident knowledge that I understand the plumbing, that unlike my husband when the plumbing gets like this, I do not expect it to be "better tomorrow," for I have learned that roots grow in and must be removed.

And then it hits. The urge. You know. Coffee loosens the bowels.

Where can I go? I wonder. The shed is out: you don't want to do number two in the drain. I try thinking of places I can walk to. There's a bagel shop nearby, but I used to work there until I quit spectacularly and so I don't really want to go there. I imagine other nearby eateries. I imagine walking in, beelining for the bathroom, taking my daily dump, then leaving with my head high.

What do I do? Yes. I GO INTO OUR BATHROOM AND USE THE TOILET. Why? I don't know. It looked so non-overflowed, and it HAS been flushing, just slowly. SO I USED IT.

Whoah is me, woe is me, for now I am home, most of the morning is gone and I've only read two pages, and instead of a clean bathroom I have a nightmare of embarrassing errata strewn about the overflowing bowl. Only myself to blame. BECAUSE I KNEW BETTER; YES, I DID.

And a maintenance man on the way. And yes, mom, I think he'll be able to see my poop.