Not my first Roto-Rooder-o

The People for Less Unrest in Marriage (or PLUM), an entirely imaginary and long-dormant think tank of which I have found myself a spokesperson, and now its descendant entity, People for Less Unrest in Municipal Parenting (or PLUMP), would like to share the following announcement:

Never be the one to say, “I told you so.”

You may think it quite a bit. You may even go as far as writing it on pieces of scrap paper you will burn in ritual protest over the backyard fire pit as your family roasts marshmallows that will inevitably gum up strands of their hair - but you should never say those four little words aloud. Even if you think them to be cheap words to work into casual conversation.

Even when the parties you so told disregard all that sage advice and come to see the error of their ways, you don't get to be smug. It's a bad look on everyone, and it could be costly.

So what if it's going to be cold later? You don't have to be the defender of people who should bring sweaters.

Is it really necessary to follow weather predictions to their logical conclusions? Pfffft! Runners should know not to go out during thunderstorms. And couch potatoes should know to charge their phones. 

Though playing Battleship by candlelight for old times' sake (and to ward off boredom) might be one of the things you use in future arguments about unplugging, but I wouldn't. I Told You Sos can be sneaky that way, too.

There is not a person in the world who doesn't know they've stepped in something awful until Captain Obvious pointed it out.

Personally, my favorite time to lob an I Told You So, is when the kitchen sink drain starts to slow and the person who is most likely to tinker with things refuses to call a plumber.

Since this is not my first Roto-Rooder-o, I know there's a backup in the lines that no manner of lye-based products left to marinate at sink level will solve. We've already taken the plunger and exhausted the extent of its effectiveness. 

But Tinkering Partner will need to try.

Tinkering Partner may also attempt to curtail Operations Management's insistence that two functions - say hand washing dishes and machine washing clothes - can (and should) be able to happen simultaneously.

This is where you can stand your ground by doing nothing, letting the standing water speak for itself. Eventually, (and from experience) I'd say we're only a few days out from Suds on the Floor behind the Washer as the Triggering Event to an Actual Solution.

This is when an I Told You So can go so horribly wrong.

Because the intricacies of ancient plumbing may be lost on such a person, not to mention the cost of professional intervention.

As maybe Tinkering Person spending an afternoon in a basement up to their elbows in effluvium, is the best thing after all.

As long as he doesn't say, I told you we didn't need a plumber.

The odds-on favorite

I saw the opportunity from across the patio, and I had planned to ignore it.  

My husband was talking to a nice man, and together they firmly planted a small-talk flag in what would ordinarily be my talking-point quicksand. 

But with the blessing of slight anonymity, liquid refreshment, and the desire to keep politics on mute, I was determined to stay on solid ground. 

For the first time in I-can't-even-recall-another-time, instead of taking the bait, I was going to just smile, nod in agreement, and ask the host for "a little more of this amazing salad."

I was so ready to just enjoy the evening and the company. It didn't even matter that just minutes before, a well-meaning stranger dropped into my lap the most dreaded of all getting-to-know-a-person questions: "So what do you do?" 

I didn't even flinch. I just said with a creepy wink: "I mostly make trouble," then stood up and asked if anyone needed any refreshments from the snack table. 

But just as I reached the food, my husband looked at me and, with the wave of an arm in my direction, announced: "you should talk to my wife - she has a more interesting take on this topic than I do." 

I withdrew my hand, which had been hovering over a platter, trying to decide which delicate morsel to select as if it had burned me. My appetite was suddenly gone.  

I hadn't been to a party in 18 months, yet, somehow, all the stomach-twirling discomfort of being a social misfit rocketed back as if it had never spent the last year and a half in semi-isolation. I was ready to enjoy the company of other humans without having to be diametrically opposed to everything they had to say, especially when we mostly agree. 

Of course, having heard only three words -- Gillibrand, Franken, and forced-resignation -- I knew what the consternation was and why it had resurfaced. 

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand -- one of the most prominent Democrats who had called for the resignation of popular Minnesota Senator and former SNL Comedic star Al Franken after several women raised allegations of sexual misconduct -- had missed a vote to bring a law on equal pay to the senate floor. It doesn't matter that Republicans announced they would filibuster equal pay so there would be no football to snatch away at the last minute. It certainly didn't matter that Franken chose to step down instead of wait for the outcome of an investigation. "She made him do it."

This perceived "Fauxmality-Pas" was just another reminder that liberal-minded Democrats prefer a tow-headed jokester with sophomoric antics to a career politician who wouldn't take one for the team.

It didn't seem to matter that Franken's charm, in Congress, wasn't nearly as effective as it was entertaining. (We still got Kavanaugh.) It also doesn't seem to matter that Tina Smith, a capable and qualified politician, took his seat and has been re-elected, twice.

I suppose it's just difficult to resist the gravitational pull of personality. 

I wished I could stand up for the funny man, too. I have fond memories of prank calling local bookstores in 1996 to ask if they could tell me the title of Al Franken's new book? My only goal was to giggle uproariously when the person on the end of the line obliged and then repeated: "Rush Limbaugh is Big Fat Idiot" for all to hear.

But the credible allegations against Franken made it difficult for me, if not impossible, to accept that such behavior toward women should be just buried for the sake of solidarity by the party that aims for higher ground.

And when people tell me the man is innocent until proven guilty, I tell them when women are the victims it's usually the other way around. Fairness is not something we have come to expect as much as recrimination. 

I mean, a man claims he was swallowed by a whale and spit back out, and we just marvel in amazement. A woman says she was groped during a photo op, and we ask her how much she'd been drinking.  

Another shot

 It's 9 p.m. My eyes dart from the television to my watch, and, finally, to a window that looks out over the driveway. Waiting and uncertainty cause my stress levels -- now quantified and reported by the proprietary technology on my wrist -- to spike.

Several times already, lights from traffic on the road out front tricked me into thinking her car pulled into the driveway. Each time, my heartbeat inches higher momentarily and then retreats. I let out the breath I've been holding in, only to imprison it once again.

My body and mind will figure-eight through this pattern until the door swings open and my firstborn child walks through the door, smelling of pizza and sauce and sounding her delight or displeasure her hours of restaurant service has wrought.

This moment feels normal and celebratory and panic-inducing all in one shot.

She flops down on the couch and pulls out a fistful of wrinkled bills. She tells me she is starving as she smooths the cash and starts to count: Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty.

Not a bad haul for a Tuesday.

I start a pot of water for pasta as she tells me about all the outrages and intrigues. And the curious story of the asymmetrical piling of pizza boxes how it caused her to burn her wrist.

A Connecticut-shaped welt on her arm looks about as angry as a bad sunburn. Commissary loves company.

"Maybe you should ice it," I suggest as I break a fist-full of angel hair into the boil.

"Do we have any paper towels? My boss says that wrapping wet towels around it is better."

I smile and nod.

It's official. I have joined the category of old wives who tell tales, I guess. The point is magnified by the fact that, as I type this, I am sitting in a hot car, in the parking lot of our pediatrician's office, banished from the annual proceedings by the onward march of maturity and a teenager's desire for independence.

I wonder what the doctor will say about the burn?

My level of panic is temporarily held at bay by a constant vigil at my smartphone's screen. I am at once afraid there will come a situation in which I will be needed, and anxious that there will be no need for me at all. My presence is on the wane.

Why does it always feel that we only get one shot? Maybe it's just in these moments of uncertainty, the moments where we have to cede control, where our minds hold us hostage. These are the moments of imminent change.

A parade of new parents with babies pass by my mobile waiting room.

I remember those days like they were yesterday. Though it concerns me a little as the time ticks by and those same parents make their round trip. There is still no word from my child.

And just as I look down at the screen, it lights up with a message. "You need to come in and sign for me to get a vaccine. The doctor says I need a parent or someone over 18 to give permission."

"See that ... There's always another shot."

The customer is always wrong

 The machine sprang to life with the push of a button, as expected, and then it forced out a giant exhalation of air and an anemic stream of hot, brown water. 

Not even a mouthful.

"Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do," I said to myself, with all the expletives I could muster and none of the yesteryear-words my grandmother would have used. 

I tried again. Pushed the buttons and waited: this time only drops drip from the device.

The fancy new coffee maker was on the fritz, and, I'm not ashamed to admit, it put me on the proverbial warpath. Trying to get a decent cup of coffee before you've had a decent cup of coffee often leads me to dark places. Not to mention, this would be the second machine, just over its warranty date, to decaffeinate unexpectedly. 

 "This doesn't make sense," I told the air around me as I unplugged and replugged the device, and then opened and closed the levers. How could this be a user error? I questioned myself as I continued this costly experiment pressing the two buttons in various combinations and speeds as if the coffee elevator would arrive at my crazy floor any faster.

Trial and error here was just literally a waste -- two inches of coffee would cost me $4 in supplies.

Rage momentarily clouds my rationality.

You know ... because we've all grown accustomed to buying new because repairs are just as costly and twice as inconvenient. 

Showing me no other solution besides taking my credit card to the store and starting from scratch, after which I will grouse about the latest in a string of disposable appliances I've managed to drag to the edge of the driveway muttering to myself about "highway robbery." 

"Or ... you could google the problem and see if anyone else has run across it," said the boy with a smirk. 

A quick internet search sends me to the page of people just like me who have indeed had this very mishap dampen their mornings. And they found solace and some degree of success running warm soapy water through the chamber a few times.

I try it to no avail. There is little build-up to remove, and subsequent test pours continue to squeeze out progressively less volume.

The interwebs show me how to find the one-eight-hundred number of the manufacturer, so I call it, pleased to find that the service number reaches real, live human beings 24-hours a day. Apparently, they have applied the happy-hour sentiment -- about it always being "quitting-time somewhere," -- to the expensive coffee machine world. Someone is always waking up to a cup of disappointment. 

The voice that greets me after a moment on hold is scripted to within a dry monotone. Her helpfulness is debatable. She can't believe I am unable to locate my account number or the receipt that would verify the age of my machine. She instructs me how to find the serial number, and as I turn the machine over, water drains onto my feet.

This is not going well.

I just want a simple answer to my problem, and she has a whole menu of steps to lead me through for the next 12 to 18 minutes of a call that might be recorded for quality purposes.

"First, you will need a paper clip and an unused toothbrush. ... I will wait."

I tell her I'm fresh out of toothbrushes.

"She insisted. You will need a soft brush of some sort. I will wait."

I could tell I was already a disappointment.

Not only was I a luddite customer without the sense God gave a goat when it came to basic problem solving, and I was also incapable of following simple directions.

"Next, you will need hot water ... almost to the point of boiling."

"I'm in an office without hot water," I stammered. I'll have to do this later. What's the next step?"

"You don't have a microwave?"

I imagined she was mocking me to the other service techs while she muted her end of the conversation. 

"I .... didn't think of the microwave," I stammer, fully intending to come up with all further supplies she tells me I need, without exception. If I am not successful, I will pretend otherwise.

 

"Run the machine until there is no longer water in the reserve chamber."

I hum while the machine chugs along, slowly spurting scalding water out its spout into the empty container. It all goes as planned until she asks me an open-ended question: "How many times did you depress the button?"

"Six," I said with improvised confidence because I wasn't keeping track.

"The chamber only holds four," she says with derision. "I'm going to have you reset the device to factory specifications, and then we will do some tests with used coffee capsules.

The reset was all of holding one button down for a count of five seconds.

"You are going to have to count slower than you are used to for this to work."

When she asks me to press the button again, I can tell that the output volume has also been restored to its original factory setting, Yet her belief in my competence has not changed.

I pretend to carry out her request of filling three separate cups to test the serving consistency. "They all look the same to me."

"They should all be 4.3 ounces ... are they?"

"And so they are. Exactly."