Ah, the weekend. A time to relax and enjoy everything that’s good in life. Like clogged drains, bug bites, railroad tie splinters embedded so deeply in your arm that they become a part of your skeletal system and psychotic babies that roll under the bed, get stuck and giggle insanely when they can’t get out.
I’ll start with the good stuff. We watched a pretty decent movie on Friday. Almodovar’s “Talk to Her.” I enjoyed 90% of the film, but thought it was too predictable in the end. Which is quite an accomplishment considering it was in Spanish.
Saturday morning we decided to rip out the railroad ties in our back yard. Because we’re idiots. Complete, moronic idiots. We shouldn’t be allowed in public. That took what seemed like three or four days. Sweat, blood, dirt and bugs that have more legs than the President has advisors. Yuck.
In the midst of the festivities, my wife discovered a black plastic bag buried beneath the ties. Thinking nothing of it, we threw it away. That was that. Well, two hours later, both the baby and the mommy have strange lesions on their arms. Gasp, we thought. Could this be anthrax?
Now, before you laugh at our psychotic, paranoid delusions, let me explain something. We bought our house two months ago from a man named Oleg. Oleg had about eight people living in his house. All of them were “relatives” but no one looked alike. Suspicious.
What’s more, Oleg had a big satellite dish on the roof. Now, according to law, he is supposed to leave that dish. On our final walkthrough, I noticed the dish was gone. When questioned about this, Oleg replied, “It is a Russian dish. You need nothing of it.”
Okay. From what I saw it was an elliptical DirectTV satellite dish. But what do I know? I’m only a gadget-obsessed geek.
Well, we bought the house and moved in. Besides leaving behind various bits of furniture that we would assume a normal person would like to take with them, we noticed that there were video amplifiers installed in the house. It’s not a big house and there was really no need for Oleg to boost his digital cable signal. This got me thinking. Again, suspicious.
Well, after a few days we noticed that there was a rectangular patch in the far end of the back yard that seemed to be slightly higher than the rest of the ground. Obviously a grave. Plus, strewn about in the same area were various car parts. Like an exhaust system for a 1985 Thunderbird, an oil pan for a 72 Chevy Vega and another exhaust system for a Peugeot.
So, naturally, we put two and two together and got Q. Oleg was, quite obviously, a spy. And he had to kill his partner, get rid of his cars and bury them all in the back yard.
Therefore (bear with me, I’m getting back to the point), it was clear that the black plastic bag was filled with weapons-grade anthrax that Oleg was refining in order to keep his good standing with the rogue KGB agents who, after the war in Iraq, are planning on staging a coup and putting Russia back under a pure Communist regime.
Turns out the anthrax lesions that my wife and daughter have are actually bug bites. But I still stand by my theory that Oleg was a Russian spy. We don’t like Russians, right? Because they have nuclear weapons and put Laika in space before we were able to launch the Mars rover or something?
I should probably read the paper periodically.
So anyway, after rustling the kids into bed after a finely barbequed meal by yours truly with only three grease fires and one scarrable burn, we were getting ready to settle in for an evening of relaxation.
Then my wife said it.
“Would you switch the load of laundry?”
Why of course. I’d love to. Hey, what’s that water streaming underneath the wall of the basement bathroom? I do hope nothing is terribly awry.
Holy Crap. Mother of Edith Head. Sweet Bake McBride.
The sink in the bathroom seemed to have exploded with the ectoplasm of a thousand writhing souls doing time in the pits of hell. The floor was caked in a one-inch thick quagmire of muck and blackened grime being fed by a bubbling, spitting mass of blackened sludge oozing from the sink. And I swear it was staring at me.
“Dear God,” I thought, “I’m on Dagobah.”
I summoned my wife. She cried for an hour and started packing our things, swearing that renting property wasn’t so bad, as I prepared the dynamite packs, trying to make it look like a gas leak lest we lose the insurance.
Shortly after midnight, we were finished. I swore I would figure it out the next day and fix it myself, by gum. After I mowed the lawn, edged, trimmed bushes and complained about the heat and humidity.
Well, I did figure out the problem. It was basic science. There was a blockage in the drain slightly below the joint where the sinks’ drain met up with the pipe. Whenever we used the kitchen sink, which is on the same drain, the water and contents from the garbage disposal would end up in the sink in the bathroom. It was lovely.
But wait! They have products to deal with this sort of thing! I can buy something and fix it good as new! Yay! My man-ness was salvaged.
Sort of. I never considered that if it is impossible for this store-bought sludge to actually reach the crud in the pipe, it won’t work.
So, after many hours I relented and hired a professional. He came in, without any butt crack showing, and cleared our drain. He was very impressed that I was able to tell him where the problem was, despite my lack of knowledge of the term “Furncoe”. Even now I don’t think I know what it is, or even if it really is something. Maybe he screwed me when installing the furncoe. Or something. Who cares? I can now do dishes without flooding the basement.
But, to top off my fantastic weekend, when I woke up this morning, the trashmen had come two and a half hours ahead of schedule, so I still have my trash. And then, when hanging up my towel, the hook fell out of the wall.
I’m so happy I work in an editorial capacity. Because if I worked with nuclear materials, I’d surely have an extra head, with the luck I’m having.
Discuss Paranoid Delusions
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