Living with danger, despair, and sneaky appliance attacks.
Last night, my wonderful new garbage disposal barfed on me.
I was a mess. After all, I had been spat upon. I was outraged.
Woody Allen once did a comic monologue about his small appliances being Anti-Semitic. At first I decided to blame Arab terrorists, but it didn't help. We are an interdenominational household. Likely my Insinkerator is not a bigot. But we've all been more than a bit raw at anything unexpected of late.
Bill (who is very smart, but not particularly handy and is also frightened of plumbing that does not respond to the suckage of a rubber plunger) decided to ‘take a look.’
I went upstairs because it's never pretty when he does that. And he likes to place the blame when things go wrong. Things don’t ‘just happen’ in my husband’s world. They happen....because....
Since the dogs and I are handy, quite often things are our fault, one or all three of us. No wait. Bessie doesn't do anything wrong. Just the new poodle, Lillian, and I are the screw ups.
I get bruises BECAUSE I don’t watch where I am going. This is true. But it’s also true that no one can see a black dog in a dark room when one or both black dogs have decided to change where they sleep in the middle of the night. Ow.
One time I heard a really loud THUNK in the kitchen, and a really loud silence. I waited. Finally I walked toward the echo of the THUNK to see Bill standing in front of the open refrigerator, clenching his jaw, staring into the chilly depths while a huge jar of pickles was rolling away from his foot.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
“Yes. I’m just trying to figure out how I can blame this on you.”
We laugh a lot after these things are over, but when they are happening, he thinks it’s a disaster.
BACK TO THE DISPOSAL HURL
Remember those old guys on SNL when Billie Crystal and someone else used to do stupid painful things to themselves and then say, "Ooooh. I hate when that happens."
While I tiptoed upstairs, my husband kept flicking the switch on the disposal and kept getting covered in green garbage. He was apparently testing out some theory.
"WHAT did you PUT in here!!!!!!?????" he yelled up at me, where I was uhm, trying to stay out of the way. Yeah, that’s what I was doing.
"Cucumber peels. Just cucumber peels. That’s it. That’s all. I was peeling cucumbers," I responded, while I de-gunked my face.
"Well, that's the problem. You can't put things like that in a garbage disposal!!!!" he yelled up at me.
"Huh?"
"Cucumber skin is way too tough for a garbage disposal."
Now, you don't talk to a man when he's in that kind of mode. Because of course a woman doesn't understand the fine workings of such a sophisticated piece of heavy metal jaws that can't chew a puny rind. Right.
I called Kevin, who installed it, who promised to come look the next morning.
Last night, with The Crisis over, I said,
"Bill? I made some marinated cucumbers. Would you like some?"
"No. Now I hate cucumbers."
(Which of course made us both laugh. But he wouldn’t budge on the cuke skin issue.)
And, as I assume you know, none of us are easy to live with. We all come packaged with styrofoam quirks. I’m very lucky that Bill makes great allowances for my various peccadilloes. That’s not a herd of new pets I’ve adopted, but it’s one of my favorite words, so I’m using it.
Turns out the piping from the dishwasher was too small/narrow to handle the new addition. Kevin fixed the pipe and it will be fine. I asked him to write a note saying that this disposal can handle everything but a hip bone......but instead I shall become a subversive, stealth user of my own electric pig. It’s easier.
I sent the following e-mail to Bill at work—
Dearest Husband,
Until you can do over part of our conversation last evening, I figured I'd have the following T-shirt made for you to wear.....
Your loving wife
To which he responded...... (meaning he's not giving one inch, Mr. Sillyman
Dearest Beverly,
I think that is an emblem you should wear with proper humility and
admonition.
The Husband
But speaking of trying to prevent future terrorism from humans, not gadgets, get this:
Kevin's theory of thwarting airline hijacking: Make every passenger eat a pork rind before they are allowed on board.
See? We all look at the world through weird lenses.
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