A Million Times

I hate the way this is going to sound, like I'm some incompetent hack who relies on my husband to do all household repairs, etc. The fact of the matter is that I can mow the lawn, I can use power tools (only due to a genetic predisposition), I can do your basic trouble shooting stuff. When I can't, I certainly know when to drag in the experts. We all have our strengths.

I happen to be married to someone who believes that there is no job too small and certainly no job too big. Generally it's been okay, a few boofles in the past certainly haven't convinced him that he should throw in the towel on the big, technical, complicated job thing.

Now for our story. When we moved to this awful house that we live in, our landlord promised us all sorts of repairs. For example, he promised to put flooring in since the house only has the cement slab foundation for flooring. He promised to fix the fridge, the dishwasher, the mold. Blah, blah, blah. We believed him, got nothing in writing. We presently have mold, a broken fridge, and darn cold feet on ugly cement slab. So when stuff goes wrong these days, we shrug and try to keep on the sunny -- you know, the side that has us buying our own house very soon, cross your fingers. Anyway, the house had a sprinkler system that predates my own birth. California is so messed up!!! We're reminded daily on the news and monthly in our water bills that there is a significant water shortage and please conserve. Nobody here does native plants, though, they all want big grassy lawns that catch on fire, require a ton of water, and need illegal aliens to up-keep them with big gas guzzling lawn-mowers. Everyone has sprinkler systems that go off everyday, rain or shine. Back at home in Michigan, a region with the most fresh water per capita than anywhere else in the world, normal (middle class) people certianly did not have sprinkler systems and we definitely didn't water our lawns everyday. We followed city rules, watered our lawns on our respective odd or even days (as determined by the last digit of our address) by placing one of those arcing sprinkler doo-hickeys out there for a 1/2-hour then moving it 10-feet to the other side of the lawn, some of us stood out there with a hose and did it manually. We only used our slip-and-slides on "our" days. Many of us had brown, crispy lawns but we were conserving water because it's the darn right thing to do! Have I digressed?
Anyway, our landlord's dinosaur of sprinkler system gets its operating system from those old Apple IIE computers that my family bought when I was 3-year old. Because we are not Californians, as evidenced by our committment to conserve water, Lars claims he turned off the sprinkler system. Never mind that daily, the stupid thing goes off, watering the street, the concrete patio, some grass, and the driveway. Never mind that one of the sprinkler heads is broken and erupts into Old Faithful grade waterworks every afternoon shooting muddy water into the pool and surrounding communities. Lars insists that its off. I tell him its not, he sees with his scientist eyes that its not, but his scientist fingers (incapable of unscientific error) turned off the sprinkler system. Well, the durn thing has been on since this morning, it is now 2:45 and it is still going. I called him, even though I'm a feminist and can troubleshoot, because after 6-months of being "off" the sprinkler is in fact still on and there is now a pod of dolphins swimming in our back yard. He didn't react the way a husband should react when his wife has asked him A MILLION TIMES to do something. I got so mad I told him that I was going to rip the darn sprinkler system computer thingy out of the wall and then he'd be sorry, but at least it would turn it off . . . right? Right? Cause I can troubleshoot . . . ummm, right? Well, I wanted to rip it out of the wall, I really did, and I have a bad temper and I just couldn't take it. I took a deep breath, tried to be calm, decided to unplug it instead of bashing on the cement slab floor. You with me? Seems as though all that extra force I had to use to wedge my pregnant belly, fat butt, watering-conserving, Michigan-self back by the sprinkler system may have actually led to the stupid, stupid, stupid thing being removed from the wall. I don't know how it happened. But, anyway, with the dumb thing in my hands, I ran to the back of the house only to see the sprinkler STILL going. I cried. I got down on my hands and knees, threw my head onto the wet patio with the frickin' dolphins and sobbed my eyes out. Lars said something snarky, he's says he's sorry.
And so here I am, blood on my hands, a regular Lady MacBeth -- "out damned spot."