vituperation

For the last three weeks our downstairs shower has been draining really slowly. I’ve kept a plunger by the tub, because if you plunge it a couple of times it helps a lot. There’s been a lot of talk about calling a plumber out to route the pipes out with a snake, but I haven’t actually made the call because the timing never seemed right. So, we’ve been using the plunger and living with it.

Until today, when my incomparable genius came through and fixed the problem.

You know that little lever mechanism that controls the stopper in the drain? The one you pull up on when you want to stop up a tub, and push down to let the water out?

I pushed it down.

I am wearing a t-shirt right now that says “No one listens to me until I fart,” courtesy of my wife’s trip to Maine.

You may or may not recall from the last entry, but I spent the whole weekend setting ten posts for the shed I’m building to keep the tractor attachments and garden tools in. It was a lot of hard work, but fun in a sort of masochistic way. I really enjoy building stuff, though I sometimes wonder why.

Monday, I was unable to work on the shed because I needed to cut some grass and it was after 7:00 by the time I finished. Tuesday, I had to pick Robyn up at the airport (she scheduled a flight that landed just after 5:00, the perfect time to not give me enough time after work to start anything OR give me enough time to start anything once we got back to the house). Wednesday, I was itching to work on the shed, though it looked like it might rain at any time.

It took me about fifteen minutes to get everything set up: hooking up three 100-foot power cords, getting the saw and screwdriver, and getting all my tools. If I have one complaint about having more property it’s that everything’s so damn far apart, you spend more time moving shit from point A to point B than you do actually doing what you set out to. Finally, though, I was ready to start.

I measured across the end of the shed and cut a girt to length with my circular saw. Next, I spent ten minutes or so getting it level across three posts, which was a huge pain because part of that leveling included some digging to keep the girt close to the ground (the tractor has to be able to set things on the floor from the PTO, so I’m trying to keep the floor about 10 inches off the ground). Finally, though, everything was cool and I put three-inch screws through the girt and into each post to hold it in place until I could get the support girt on the opposite side of the posts up. The plan was to put carriage bolts through all the pieces once both girts were up, to provide enough support to hold up all those 400-500 pound tractor attachments.

Only I couldn’t get the back girt level with the front. I worked and worked, moving back and forth from end to end, trying to get it. All to no avail. If one end leveled, the other went out of whack. In a fit of pique, I laid the level across the front girt again to make sure I’d gotten it level.

The little bubble in the viewport skewed all the way to the left.

Goddamn.

I went back to the front and spent another ten minutes re-leveling the girt. More shuffling back and forth, more digging with the trenching shovel, but eventually it was ready.

And once again I couldn’t get the back to level with the front.

This time, when I laid the level on the front girt from the back side, the bubble slid all the way to the right side.

That’s when I found out that my level? Wasn’t. The little section that holds the bubble tube had a loose screw, and was several degrees out of true. I tightened the screw, then decided to go to Lowe’s and get the best level I could find, one that didn’t rely on screws to hold the bubble tubes level. By the time I got back, it was too late to do anything else.

Welcome to Carpentry 101. My name is Fred, and I’ll be your teacher.

Thursday? It rained again. Today, my shed remains ten posts and one crooked girt.

On the way back from the aforementioned trip to Lowe’s, I stopped at the house up the road to get the girls a watermelon. I left Robyn in the car and trudged over to the scaffolding with a tarp over the top that serves as a stand. The watermelons were on the ground there, laid out in a line by size. I selected one of the smaller ones — my girls could stand to watch their figures, you know — and picked it up.

The old man at who grows the produce (only watermelons and tomatoes right now) shuffled across the lawn toward me, relying heavily on the cane clutched in one gnarled hand. He wore clothes of a style popular in the 50’s and still popular today with people who were adults back then, and an ancient straw hat perched atop his wool-like white hair. He moved very slowly, and it looked like it pained him, so I went to meet him halfway, two dollars ready. I held the watermelon up.

“Two dollars, right?” I asked. In my mind’s eye, I saw a little kid chasing John Cusask around while shouting TWO DOLLARS!

“I been gettin’ three,” he said.

“Oh, okay. I bought a couple from your wife and she always charged two.” I reached for my wallet.

He raised the hand holding the white cane, a twinkle in his eye.

“Gonna have to beat her with this,” he said, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Two it is. We can catch up next time.”

“I don’t mind paying three. It’s a good deal. I buy them for my chickens.”

“For your chickens?”

I nodded. “They love ‘em. I tried growing some myself but they got too weedy so I cut ‘em down.”

He shook his head, a rueful grin on his face.

“My grandkids been feedin’ melons to our chickens,” he said.

“Bet they like ‘em, too, don’t they?”

It was his turn to nod.

“How many chickens do you have?” I asked. “I saw a big white leghorn here the other day.”

“Got two out back.”

“Get many eggs from ‘em?”

“They lay eight or nine a week, but somethin’ keeps gettin’ ‘em.”

I thanked him for the watermelon, paid my two dollars, and left.

Ten minutes later I was back. Now, he was sitting in a lawn chair under a big tree, enjoying the afternoon. Once again I left Robyn in the car and walked over to him.

“Here you go,” I said, and held out a dozen of the finest eggs in Alabama. “How ’bout we call it even now?”

His thanks was effusive. I felt so good when I got back into the car that I put it in reverse without engaging the clutch and stalled it out right there in front of him.

I’m sure my reputation around Smallville is nice enough fella, but kind of dumb.

Fred’s man tips for a happy marriage, tip 107:

Suppose you’re watching TV with your wife and a commercial you recognize comes on.

“Hey, there was a thread on Fark about her,” you say, pointing at the woman on the TV. You might laugh a little. “About whether or not she was hittable.”

“Oh yeah?” your wife may ask. “What was the consensus?”

“That she was hittable, in a soccer mom sort of way.”

Your wife may raise an eyebrow.

“And what did you say?” she might ask.

“Oh, I didn’t post in the thread,” you reply. “I just read it.”

“But would you hit it?”

If this happens, friends, the correct answer is not, “Like the fist of an angry god.”

Here’s today’s video to remind you how old you are. This is the first live performance of the song ever outside the studio by all the original artists, twenty-five years after it was first recorded. It’s so stunningly good I got a greenlight on Fark for submitting it.

Enjoy.