Luckily enough, my younger cousin Madeline was in town to see grandma too, so we got to hand out. The first night there, Sharon and I went to the fair. I got a huge funnel cake, because there is practically nothing better than powdered fried dough. We walked around and watched little kids ride the rides that were missing lights and lurched precariously to and fro. I made the decision to not hop into a metal death machine. One of the rides was held together by electric cord wrapped around one of the legs.
I had good reason to be scared.
I did play darts though, and won a fat, blue dolphin. I just had to pop the balloons.
I had a chance to play another game, where you throw these really heavy balls at metal milk bottles. I am a terrible shot though, and cant throw very hard, so I passed up my chance to win a confederate flag. I totally need one of those anyway.
As we left the fair, Sharon got an elephant ear. Its this flattened piece of dough the old and creepy carnies flatten out with their bare hands and fry like a funnel cake. Then they use a paint brush and coat it in cinnamon goo. If I hadn't been full of hot funnel cake, I would have had more than a few bites.
Our last stop was at the taffy maker. I was amazed to see taffy actually being made on this huge, spinning turning thing. I watched the taffy just stretch and collapse for five minutes. It was the coolest thing at the fair.
We eventually went back to the car and drove back to grandma's house.
Madeline, my step-brother Nathaniel and my grandma had gone to an a cappella musical play at the theatre instead of the fair. Nathaniel didn't enjoy the play one bit. But he was also a huge critic of everything. Music, movies, television, books. I wasn't sure he actually enjoyed anything.
I tried to stay in the conversation with everyone, but I grew bored and instead sat on the couch and read my book. At around one in the morning, everyone finally decided to go to bed.
The next day, it rained all morning. Our original plan was to go to the pool, but because of the rain, we had changed out plans to instead go see a movie. It was after that decision that the rain cleared up, but I didn't want to go to the pool at that point in time anyways.
Madeline, Nathaniel and I decided to ride around in the new golf cart, (it's electric!). We drove to the river and back around town for hours and hours. We also chased the copious amount of stray cats that littler my grandma's town. To say the least, it was a hoot. We had even come up with aliases so if we were caught by the "coppers," we couldn't possibly get into trouble.
The "coppers" is a single cop who drives around telling people what a nice day it is.
For the rest of the weekend I called Nathaniel, Cleatus, and Madeline, Mary Louis. They called me Jo Anne.
We didn't get into any trouble, except when after I was done running around in the park bare foot I tracked in dirt all over grandma's carpet.
When Sunday morning came around, I just about died.
I have had a lot of bad mornings. Like the time the water bill hadn't been paid, and it was the one morning I really needed a shower. Or when the power went out and I had to put on eyeliner by candle light. Or even the one time I got soap in my eye three times in twenty minutes. Those were bad days.
This last Sunday though, was the worst.
It started when the toilet got clogged.
Thinking, Oh, I'll just flush it again! was a terrible idea.
It overflowed. I switched into survivor mode, and started throwing down wads of toilet paper. I went through one roll of the really nice kind of toilet paper by the time it stopped. I was literally having a spaz attack. Or maybe possibly an asthma attack. I couldn't freaking breathe!
I went searching for the plunger, which was hidden in the attic. It was a fancy kind of plunger, with this accordion like plunge part. The insane part of me was going, Wow! Would you look at that? That's so cool! The sane part was going, Fuck, fuck, fuck. Because I had to unclog a toilet. Something I had never done in my life.
All while this episode is going on, Sharon and her mom are sitting downstairs looking at Facebook pictures.
I try to unclog the toilet. I tried really hard. But I didn't know a damn thing about clogged toilets. There was really no reason I would know anything about it anyways, but some other part of me, not the sane or insane parts, was going, You've watched enough TV to have seen something useful. Well after racking my brain for any useful information, I came up blank and had to simply wing it. All while standing in overflowed toilet water.
After another half hour of plunging with the plunger, I tried to flush the toilet once more. (There was two other previous tries.)
The toilet made usual toilet sounds, the water rising...rising...rising...And oh my God, it was still clogged...then TRIUMPH! The water was sucked down the drain!
I was sweaty and hot, and still standing in toilet water, but I cannot even explain how joyous I was that I had fixed the toilet.
I was like, "That's right, you porcelain bastard! I fucking fixed you!" Needless to say, the toilet didn't talk back.
Then it was clean up time. I wished I had some secret power that I could have just made the mess poof away, but I didn't. So I was down on my knees, soaking up the mess. Then I was disinfecting everything, spraying down every surface in the bathroom. And to make sure everything was back to normal, I sprayed a ton of Febreze in the bathroom. Everything was just dandy.
I cleaned myself up, too. Nobody knew a thing.
We left grandma's house, nobody the wiser.
Well maybe except for me, who I can say is now certified in toilet unclogging.
No comments:
Post a Comment