You know how sometimes, for absolutely no reason at all, a funny memory pops into your head and its like it happened all over again and all you want to do is tell everyone you see about it? Really? Huh. Happens to me all the time.
When Scott and I were first together, also when I was pregnant with Hunter (insert gasp here), we lived in a tiny, 900 square foot house that was built some time between Lincoln taking office and the slinky being invented. That house was cramped, it was old, it was falling apart from floor to ceiling, and I loved it.
One of the things that I loved about it was the full basement. There were 2 unfinished bedrooms and a laundry room the size of my living room now (which was also about half the size of the house) stuffed down there. The floor was concrete with an old – and I mean OLD – scrap of blue carpet layed over the top of it in one of the bedrooms, hallway, and landing area in which the stairs abruptly ended. There was no padding under it and it wasn’t stapled down, it was just there.
If you looked up while standing in the basement, you could see through the wood planks that made up the floor in the main area of the house. The only source of heat was an old oil heater that cost so much to fill, we only did if our income broke $900 for the month. Something that didn’t happen often, it was considered a luxury. We were piss ass broke and it didn’t matter one bit to either of us.
One summer we went over to Bend to visit my childhood best friend, Tina. It just so happened that Tina bought a new washer and dryer just before our visit and offered to send us home with the ones that she replaced. Up until that point, we were spending a good three hours of our lives every week at the laundry mat/convenience store/one-stop-drug-shop down the road. Let’s just say I would have strapped that washing machine to my back and carried it all 350 miles home if we didn’t happen to have taken the truck on that trip.
We got the machines home, risked our lives getting them down the stairs, took out half the sheetrock in the basement hallway with them, then hooked them up in what we could finally, thanks to Tina, call a laundry room. It was at this point that everything went to hell.
Scott decided it would be a good idea to let the washer run for a cycle to clean it out. Sounded reasonable to me. He double checked all of the hoses, plugged the thing in, started it – pay very close attention to this part – and then we LEFT. For hours.
When we got home, some time later, I went out to the front yard to poke around, and Scott went right to the basement to check out our new toy. Now, you have to understand, I was a cocktail waitress at the time. I worked in a bar where the main clientele were drunken middle-aged men that were there for three reasons; To get plastered, to hit on young girls, and to yell profanities at one another without getting in trouble with the little misses. I heard words on a daily basis that would have made a sailor blush. Yet, when Scott went down to the basement that afternoon, the words that came out of his mouth even made me cringe a little. It was bad, and I knew it.
I ran inside, over the stairwell, and down the stairs. About halfway down, I stopped. Abruptly. There he was, standing at the bottom of the stairs, blue carpet floating around him atop the 8 inches of water that cover the basement floor. I wish I could have afforded a camera at that time because I would have made a scrap book of that moment, starting with the deer caught in a headlight look on his face. Priceless.
I wasn’t raised as a girly-girl, I was raised that it was okay to get my hands dirty. Between the trips to Nordstrom, of course. I immediately recognized the absence of all ration on Scott’s face and knew that in order for this situation to be remedied, it was going to have to be me to do it. Well, at least start it. So – I wiped my hands on my jeans and said, “Well, lets get it cleaned up.”
Luckily, we had a huge wash-basin in the laundry room. This meant all we had to do for clean-up is bail water into that sink. I ran upstairs, grabbed a couple of our big garbage cans, and headed back down. On the way, I noticed Scott right on my heels – Equipped with a frying pan and bath towel. WTF? It was at this point that I lost all self control and began laughing hysterically. It was also at this point that I truly learned what the phrase “never send a man to do a woman’s work” actually meant.
I then stopped and explained to him why cleaning up hundreds and hundreds of gallons of water with a bath towel might not be the most efficient method, we had a good laugh, and went on bailing. The clean-up went well through the night and into the next morning. It was about 3 am that our heads finally hit our pillows. It was one hell of a night. One that I’m quite certain I will never forget.
One a side note: There was nothing wrong with the washing machine. Other than the fact that the drain hose WASN’T HOOKED UP.
