Fun With Housework

It's been an interesting week around here because apparently everything has decided to break or need attention at once.

1. The garbage disposal went kaput and clogged up the kitchen sink and the dishwasher. Yay.

2. The vent over the stove is now home to a sizable nest of bees. These are the most relaxed, blase bees I've ever encountered--they'll fly over and land on you like they're just saying hi, then wander off again--but that doesn't mean I want to share my living quarters with them. Adam has sprayed them three times. They don't seem impressed. If you listen closely, you can hear them giggling in there. "Those idiots!" they say. "They're using wasp and hornet killer! But we're bees! We're going to be in this vent FOREVER!!" They think they have a sweet gig going.

3. Also now inhabiting the kitchen are some disgusting black ants. Well, I mean, they're kind of cute for ants, but they are freakin' everywhere. Heck, they're not just in the kitchen. Perhaps they're using the bees for a taxi service to other parts of the house. I've put out ant baits, but apparently this just inspired them to come out in force so now they're REALLY REALLY freakin' everywhere. Joy.

4. The toilet in the hall bathroom is leaking and cannot be flushed unless you want this procedure to involve a mop. So we have to use the toilet in the master bathroom.

5. The SHOWER in the MASTER bathroom, conversely, does not leak. In fact, no water of any kind whatsoever comes out of it at all in any way. So we have to use the SHOWER in the HALL bathroom. This situation has led to a comical ablutionary procedure involving migrating from one bathroom to the other and back as many as three times depending on where you've left your personal toothbrush and whether or not you remember where you left your personal toothbrush. The Dance of the Bathrooms, I call it.

6. It's been storming sporadically all week, primarily whenever Adam seems inclined to go out and do yardwork. In fact, this has become so predictable that it seems Adam has turned into some sort of weird thunder god who wields a weed whacker instead of a lightning bolt. This finally let up today.

7. So, Adam decided to teach *me* how to use the lawnmower. Now, you have to understand that I am comically inept at every sort of yard work and the lawnmower turned out to be no exception. Heck, I couldn't even get the thing started at first. It turned out this wasn't my fault, as Adam gave me misleading instructions on how to start the thing and then stood back and sniggered when I followed them and the lawn mower would not start. He kept telling me to "pull it like you've got a pair!" while I yanked fruitlessly on the starter cord. I asked him, twice, "are you sure I don't need to prime it again?" "No, no." Finally, he got tired of watching me flail around and gave it a yank himself. Nothing. Yank, yank, yank. Nothing. So he sheepishly bends over and primes it again. Bam. Starts first pull. Punk.

8. After I mowed the front yard (leaving comical tufts of untouched grass here and there), Adam decides to tackle the back yard. Now, Adam hasn't mowed the back yard in some time. I'm not sure what we have going on in the back even qualifies as a "yard" any more. It's more like a jungle someone inexplicably fenced in. So he gets out the pith helmet and sends me on an expedition to cut down the more tree-like growths in the hopes that he won't completely annihilate the lawnmower within the first five minutes. I forage around for a while and pull out a full-grown tomato plant with five fist-sized tomatoes on it. No joke.

9. Finally, we're done and I hold the trash bag while Adam rakes up the grass. Only he seems to be having some sort of difficulty with the raking procedure because he has the hiccups and it's throwing him off.

So, yeah. Fun times.