Raw Culinary Disaster

Without a doubt, I am sure at some point during my marriage one of my in-laws has told my wife that you simply cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear concerning some of my less than refined habits. I freely admit I was raised in a lower middle class family with absolutely no aspirations to crack the societal caste ceiling and dwell among those who know the proper function of utensils at a formal dinner party. In other words, I haven't a clue which spoon on a place setting is used to stir my tea, eat my soup, or taste the dessert. In fact, at one dinner party involving several of my wife's fellow attorneys, a couple of judges, and one certified ass who happened to be a state senator, the looks I got when I buttered a dinner roll with what was probably the wrong knife forever swore me away from such functions. I probably could have farted and come away better, the state senator sure as hell did when he about cleared out the room with his.

Still though, my lovely wife hasn't given up on taking me to restaurants that lean more to a cultured culinary experience than just allowing the unwashed masses to engorge themselves on cheap imported food while ignoring the fake Americana bric-a-brac hanging on the walls. Most of the time I actually feel sad about it because, once again, where I was raised a family dinner out was going to the one fast-food restaurant my small hometown had back when I was a kid.

The best example of my wife's hopeless campaign to open me up to refined dining happened a few years back while on vacation at Disney World. We all were staying at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge, a beautiful resort decorated in an African theme that happens to sport several upper class restaurants.

Usually, I will check out the menu of the fancy eateries my wife wants to experience before we go. That way I'll know what will be the safest choice for me, while she can fully absorb all the culinary delights. For whatever reason, that time I didn't do the required research and was totally blind when the attractive hostess seated us next the large window that showed off the decorative water garden outside. For a couple of minutes my wife just enjoyed the atmosphere of the restaurant and chatted while watching the assorted brightly colored coy swim around the window.

After being handed the menu it didn't take ten seconds for me to realize I was in rather deep trouble. I saw nothing listed that even looked remotely appealing. This restaurant, named Jiko, was definitely high-end with the food priced to match. It was all new cuisine type stuff that, from my observations of the tables around me, looked more like art or biology experiments performed by cultured serial killers. For the most part the pricey nature of the items on the menu that didn't matter, we were on vacation but more importantly my wife was in the mood to enjoy herself. The absolute last thing I wanted to do was spoil the evening for her.

“Is there a problem?” the waitress asked when she came to take the order for our entrees.

“Ah yes,” I responded trying to think of a polite way of saying everything that I had read on the menu or seen at other tables came close to making me puke. “Are there other items available that aren't listed on the menu?” I asked trying to seem casual and not like some redneck who had mistakenly stumbled into the wrong place. A difficult task since Jiko had a dress code and while I technically met it, my wrinkly cargo pants, colorful Hawaiian shirt, and hippy sandals probably sent the manager scurrying to the Mickey Mouse guest etiquette book to make sure.

“Why yes,” the waitress happily said, “we have a delicious tuna salad available that one of the chefs made but failed to get listed on the daily specials.”

Hooray! I joyously thought to myself. A normal tuna salad with lettuce, some boiled egg, and other leafy things would be just the ticket while my wife ate her snails or other elaborate entree. What came a few minutes later totally shocked me since in truth, I should have realized nothing so plebeian as a normal tuna salad could be possible.

The plate was large, huge actually, with the center area occupied by two significant slices of raw tuna meat and a scattering of lettuce along with a few pieces of red and green peppers. The outside section of the dinner plate was decorated with a Jackson Pollack-like design using some sort of sauce that I'm sure was made with something equally unacceptable to my lower middle class, Southern upbringing.

“That looks absolutely delicious,” my wife said to me as she tore into her entree.

I was frozen in place looking at the contents of my plate wondering just how in the hell I was going to play this off. Yes, I have ate and love California Rolls but this was a level of rawness that I was quite uncomfortable with and had no intention of eating.

“You don't like it.” My wife said what could have been a couple of seconds or several minutes later, I have no idea since I was lost in thought.

“Yeah...no, I don't like it,” I mumbled, “I thought tuna salad meant Charlie Tuna from a can, not straight off the boat.”

My wife thought this was all funny. “Go ahead and try a bite,” she said almost giggling, “it won't kill you.”

Normally, I would have said no, but the factors present at the time all conspired against me. Namely that my lovely spouse was in an awesome mood with me thankful our place at the resort had the kids sleeping in their own bedroom. There was also the fact that the price of my raw tuna entree could have paid for five or six people to stuff themselves at the average Olive Garden.

So I manned up and sliced off a respectable chunk of the now deceased but uncooked Charlie Tuna and ate him. Instantly, there was a wonderful explosion of unhindered and untainted taste in my mouth. The flavor was everything I had come to know about tuna but exponentially greater, somehow I heard the 80's rock band “Foreigner” singing “It feels like the first time.”

For about five seconds everything was utterly wonderful and I actually thought for a moment that I would enjoy the meal. Then the aftertaste hit me like an exploding volcano, all of a sudden I felt as though I had tried to snack on a decaying zombie that had been wandering around in the hot sun for a couple of months.

“Are you okay?” my wife asked, “you look a little green.”

No, Charlie Tuna, didn't return to make a mess of me and the fancy restaurant but another bite was totally out of the question. “I'll be fine,” I said, “but for me this restaurant is a wash. I simply cannot eat another piece of this tuna.”

Surprisingly my wife didn't roll her eyes in embarrassment, nor did she get that look recalling one of the times my mom-in-law and dad-in-law probably told her she could have done much better in choosing a husband. After the waitress removed our plates, we spent the rest of the our time at Jiko's talking and eating one of their wonderful desserts.

During this relaxing time the hostess seated another couple at the table beside ours. Being my usual nosy self I couldn't help but overhear the gentleman say that he saw nothing on the menu that interested him.

“Well,” his wife or girlfriend said absently, “just order off the children's menu like you did the last time and tell them to make it adult sized.”

As my wife and I left after paying the bill the waiter for that table placed one of the most beautiful cheese burgers I had ever seen in front of that guy along with a normal looking side salad. I was simply stunned into silence not believing what I was seeing.

“Let's go,” my wife said finally rolling her eyes, “you had your chance.”

The Universe and Garage Reorganization

There is a deep, but ultimately puzzling, sense of relief coursing through my mind and body as I sit at the kitchen table typing. I will make an assumption and guess there might be two questions springing into existence for anyone reading my latest semi-coherent verbal offal. The first being what in the hell has this idiot come up now? The second being that if Beach Bum has not finally lost what tiny portion of his mind that works what could cause him to feel this way?

Well, there could several other questions associated with my first statement but the only one I will answer outright to alleviate any worries about me delving into the kinky side of life is that no, there is nothing remotely sexual about what I am feeling. But to provide an answer, which is certified family and office safe I will have to backtrack.

See, as most of you already know I work third shift, which runs from eleven o'clock at night to seven in the morning. Because of this abnormal schedule, my weekend begins Friday morning and ends on Sunday night when I must return to the old grindstone. Since everyone living here at my house is either at work or at school on Friday this provides me the opportunity, as my lovely spouse describes it, to get some chores done.

Now, unfortunately, there is never a lack of chores to be done around my house. You name the task and I can most assuredly say there is some part of my home or yard that desperately needs just such a corrective action. However during the long winter months laundry is the usual default chore I embrace just for the fact that it absolutely has to be done and that there are long lazy breaks between me washing a load of filthy clothes, transferring them to the dryer, to finally folding the newly spring fresh smelling items. With the return of warmer temperatures and longer days the specter of yard work and spring reorganizing has come to the forefront.

My self-imposed troubles began a couple of weekends ago when I up and did something miraculous and started working in the backyard without any prompting from my wife. And while there is still much to be done, progress is being made---at least in my eyes. You have to remember everything in the universe is relative and I am sure my neighbors would say something different. 

Yesterday morning my wife asked that I begin the annual garage reorganization. Since mundane consistency is an inbred hobgoblin of stunted minds I readily agreed and actually looked forward to tackling the problem. This mainly came from my military years that ingrained a need to keep everything orderly and clean. 

I kept this attitude until I stepped into the garage and began to examine the degree of chaos that existed. Assorted minutia had literally flowed off the steel storage shelves down onto the cement floor. Making matters even worse stuff important to my wife had long since been mixed in with the other collection of junk she gives to charity. From past, painful, experience I have come to know that it is best not to make the mistake of misidentifying particular items and then keeping or taking off the wrong ones,

Adding to the problem was my wife's collection of oddly shaped cooking items and unused kitchen counter appliances. Both groups take up valuable space and if I truly wore the pants in my family most of it would have been long since taken to the recycle center. Harsh and cruel you might be thinking right now. The thick coat of dust covering the vast majority of these items screams to the universe years of sitting unused.

But as they say, the journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step and I jumped into the task. Two hours later, I realized that with all the uncertainty on what items were keepers and what could be tossed I had, at best, rearranged the existing mess. That is when a calming sense of of relief flooded my being to the point I was lifted up and for one belief moment was unified with the universe. The cosmos was telling me that the job was simply too big and diabolically complex for my puny male mind to comprehend.

So what does a person do when the universe itself overrules the task your wife assigned you? You grab a beer and begin to type out some rambling verbal essay describing the situation. Then hope your wife had a good day at work and finds the situation just a funny when she comes home and see the stuff still in disarray.

The steel shelf after two hours of futile reorganization.

One of my wife's culinary items after I wiped off the dust. It has something to do with "cake pops."

Leaf Blower and Marriage Maintenance

Several years ago during a hot and humid Saturday in the middle of August I stepped back inside my house after finishing up some routine lawn care when I noticed my lovely spouse smiling at me from her comfortable position on the couch. Had we been newlyweds I would have instantly assumed her beaming smile would have been the first sign that the rest of that afternoon would be spent behind the locked door of our bedroom. Instead, being a relatively old married couple, I looked directly into her overly happy eyes and braced myself for whatever new weekend destroying chore her mind had developed while I was outside mowing the lawn and using the weed eater to make our curb look presentable.

The former is a given but as for the latter the pod people we live among are obsessively fixated on creating a surgically precise cut between the edge of their lawns and the beginning of the curb. I actually give less than a rat's rear end but indirect and unspoken peer pressure along with the occasional neatly worded letter from the president of the home owner's association force me to try and match their compulsion at least three times a summer. With the curb trimming chore out of the way I had every intention of plopping my nonconformist butt in a chair and watching some television but my wife's mysterious smile had me nervous.

"Do you know who you look just like right now?" She said clearly about to laugh at her own brand of cleverness.

"No," I said wondering where her train of thought was heading while desperately hoping it would eventually involve both of us getting naked. "Brad Pitt," I said silently thanking some exceedingly small portion of my brain that is smarter and quickly than the rest of the grey matter residing between my ears.

"God no," my wife responded finally breaking into a laugh, "you look like Bill Murray's character from the movie Caddy Shack."

"How nice," I responded sarcastically walking towards the bathroom to go take a shower. While I was obviously disappointed that sex was not on the agenda I had no real problem with being compared to Bill Murray. For me the former SNL alum has always been culturally sophisticated, extremely intelligent in an unconventional manner, besides being outrageously funny in a off-kilter way. To show how slow on the draw about what my wife actually meant about the comparison it was several minutes later and I was out of the shower and getting dressed when the truth finally dawned on me. Truth be told, I couldn't really disagree with the idea she was trying to convey.

See one of the reasons I hate doing yard work is that I am terrible at it. While the pod people I live around actually enjoy the serf-like existence required to meticulously imitate the idea of an 18th century English Lord's estate I can easily count off a couple of thousand other activities I would rather be forced to perform. But hey, if they get their jollies obsessing over the tint of their lawns, falling autumn leaves, or stemming a crab grass invasion good for them, its still a semi-free country. I, on the other hand,  would rather go to the beach, play with my kids, or have a root canal done by a dentist who once worked for the East German secret police.

The source of all my problems can usually be traced back to my lawn equipment. If you were to observe the pod people around me you would discover that everything they use is top of the line. Their riding lawn mowers have huge vacuum attachments along with GPS tracking and nifty cup holders. The weed trimmers they use have telescopic view screens allowing them to cut single blades of grass. As for the leaf blowers they use, the damn things can put out category five hurricane winds.

  On the other hand, my lawn equipment is not up to their standards. Besides that I somehow have an ingrained talent at breaking the stupid things along with having no real ability at fixing them. Because of that there were a few years I went through push lawnmowers like penny candy. That had to deal with the fuel, or my lack of adding an ethanol stabilizer. As for weed trimmers I actually had one catch fire while I was using it. I'll just say it was an electric model and leave out the rest of the details despite the fact witnesses to the event say it was extremely funny.

Leaf blowers have been a special pain for me from the moment they first arrived at the local home improvement store. As with the rest of my lawn care trials I admit I have been my own worst enemy but leaf blowers have always seemed an abomination. To me it just seems insane how people freak out over autumn leaves falling on their precious lawns. However since I am forced to comply with home owner association rules I buy the cheapest model that will allow me to get by with the barest minimum of effort.That has finally come back to bite me in my ass.

With the trees in my front yard shedding their leaves a huge section of the neighborhood curb is now in danger of being covered over. To calm the inhabitants, and keep my wife happy, a couple of days ago I dug out the two-cycle leaf blower I own, fueled it up, and prepared once again to do battle with nature. But as I pulled the cord that starts up the damn contraption it broke leaving me no way to get it going.

Like a good suburbanite I pulled out my tool bag with the idea that the leaf blower would be simple to fix, no such luck. Believe it or not the pull cord on my base line Poulan leaf blower is an utter nightmare to replace. Thirty minutes into my initial repair attempt I found that the pull cord assembly is in the very middle of the unit requiring every nut, bolt, and part to be removed to gain access.

Needless to say for me this goes way above and beyond the call of suburban duty. After several days of quiet contemplation on the subject and reviewing a You Tube video showing how to successfully replace the cord without losing your mind the issue with the leaves has not been solved. They continue to pile up and I am sure the pod people are probably worried the world will end because of it.  My wife is also getting nervous because she wants to keep good relations with at least a few of the neighbors which requires me to keep the house and yard looking at least semi-decent.

As for me, I do have a rake but that seems awful excessive at this time. I told my wife I am hoping for a very windy day, which would blow the leaves down the street, or for her to give me wild monkey sex which would supply the proper motivation. We'll certainly see which one happens first.            

What Wives Should Never Do

 (Author's note: This was my first attempt at nonfiction at the Helium.com writing site where I have been playing around with flash fiction again. The gods at Helium did not like my admittedly tongue-in-cheek response to their prompt and kicked it off the next day. As you might be able to guess the prompt was to explain the things wives should never do to their husbands. For those who might cast a disparaging eye at such a topic there was another prompt asking wives to explain what husbands should never do to them.)    


Guys in general rightfully deserve the stereotype that we are tactless brutes lacking any consideration, especially for our suffering better halves. The key words here are “in general” because if you can look beyond the superficial gruffness and false bravado are not we fresh and blood human beings ourselves with feelings that can be hurt? So ladies here is a short and simple list of things you should never do to your husband.

Never force your husband to go shopping. Simply put guys usually hate going shopping for themselves and often can be found sprinting inside a store for something they desperately need like new underwear or toothpaste. Shared common interests notwithstanding the only reason husbands and boyfriends will even begin to enter some dress or candle shop is because they think such attentive behavior might get them sex later.

Along those same lines some ladies think allowing their significant other to wait outside their favorite boutique and hold their pocketbooks while they shop is enough of a reprieve. In some ways this situation is even worse, the male of the human species spent millions of years of evolution roaming the African savanna, to tie him to one spot is akin to those brutal and inhumane cages where some livestock are forced to spend their entire lives. The only possible exception to this predicament is if there are already other guys at the same location holding their girlfriend’s pocketbook.

The funny thing is there is actually an established social hierarchy for guys who sit outside some store waiting for the ladies in their lives. Seniority is based on the oldest male in the immediate area requiring the younger pups to sit and listen to whatever he was to say. Any guy who disrespects the sitting grand poobah is expelled from the group and forced into the store his wife or girlfriend is shopping to stand around and hold her items.

Does this sound like too much whining? Yes ladies, as a man I freely admit my brothers and I complain and whine far more than the cruel and very inaccurate stereotype of woman doing the same thing suggests. What in heaven’s name do you all think us guys did as we strolled the African savanna for all those countless eons?

Do not expect us to read your minds. One of the biggest obstacles I have had to overcome in my own marriage is to develop the talent for reading my lovely wife’s mood or true feelings when she says the exact opposite. How females interact with each other when men are not around is a complete and utter mystery to me. From what I have read though it has been suggested that it is often a byzantine labyrinth of intrigue and deception. Bringing that into a relationship is a dangerous affair. We guys usually, but not always, appreciate the direct approach; remember we are after all just relatively cleaner versions of unrefined cavemen.

About a month after my wife and I were married I could tell she was very upset about something but refused to tell me what was wrong. This went on for nearly a month until she exploded and began to tell me I was the crudest and poorest example of a human being this side of your average genocidal dictator. What brought on this volcanic emotional eruption was my long habit leaving my socks on the floor next my shoes. Of course, it is an immature behavior but I had just spent two years living alone in a small apartment and developed the usual set of male habits when it came to keeping a room clean. The general reason I left them next my shoes was because I often just wore the same pair for several days. Okay, maybe that was more information than you needed to know, I apologize.

On a side note, speaking strictly for myself, but I figure it goes for all guys, if I could in fact read minds rest assured I would have already used it to become filthy stinking rich.

Wives and girlfriends should never attempt to force their significant other to dress differently, unless we ask. One of the worst traumas for boys growing up is when their mothers took them shopping for new clothes. Now some guys do have a fashion sense and enjoy walking around all GQ and honestly more power to them. That being said a number of us males, very much including myself, had to deal with a mother who desperately wanted a little girl to dress up in pretty clothes. When they had a son instead this desire stayed the same with them dragging their boys around forcing them to try on suits, ties, and oddly decorated or strange feeling pants and shirts that we were told not to get dirty.

One of the worst experiences I had along those lines was during elementary school. My mother had gone out and bought a pair of off brand blue jeans decorated with the image of a shiny cowboy hat on one back pocket and a pair of cowboy boots with tiny rhinestones on the other. At the time I was nine years old and when I saw them I knew I would catch the devil from my classmates the minute they saw me walk by. As everyone knows children can be extremely cruel and after just wearing those odd pants to school once I swore I would never go through that kind of abuse again. This bring up the fact that mothers, wives, and girlfriends should never buy the men in their lives clothes that cannot get dirty, paint splattered, and then torn to the point they become un-wearable.

Only if your husband or boyfriend asks for assistance in picking out clothes should such a task ever be attempted. Of course, this all goes all out the window if said man is about to make a total fool of himself, and then it is at your discretion.

Wives and girlfriends should not freak out if their man needs some alone time. This is where things can get messy, the two sexes, forever locked in a strange dance alternating between love and hate, each have segments that are convinced that they naturally carry all the burdens associated with a relationship. Because of this the various injured parties believes that should get the majority of time to be alone to mentally and emotionally regroup. 

The simple answer to all this posturing is that there is not one. Yes, some individuals permanently carry the burden of the relationship they are involved in but most of the time responsibilities shift from one to the other. A rational couple would sit down and discuss what bothers them and when they would like a chance to slip away and enjoy a movie or a cup of coffee before they take a chainsaw to the other. While we are at it we should all come together for a group hug and to sing “We shall overcome.” Truth be told it is human nature try and exploit an advantage to greatest possible extent at the weaker party’s expense.

While ladies are universally viewed as the weaker party in the male/female relationship dance, mainly because men are often jerks prone to quick violence, women get the edge when it comes for the need for some alone time. Ladies who are financially able can spend a day at the spa without anyone thinking anything about it. Now if a guy wants to spend the day fishing or being just being lazy he is open to a world of acid comments about falling short. The truth is that we all need a little times away from the everyday grind to recalibrate no matter how wasteful our lack of purpose might seem to others.

All this boils down to something husbands and wives should do for their spouse, it is ridiculously simple to the point of being so obvious that we often fail to think of it. Just give the most important person in your life a little consideration and take care of them like you want to be treated. 

 

Doing the Sunday night hokey pokey

Strangeness and overwhelming confusion seem to permeate my life and honestly at times I just find its just best for me to sit back and go with the flow. Adding to the confusion is how some around me, while driving themselves crazy trying to keep up, seem to get upset with me for not doing the same myself. Now I bounce from one bizarre and confusing situation to another concerning my wife and kids hoping someone will fill me in with the details at some point.

My son finally got a cell phone this weekend but much to my surprise after months of whining he gazed upon the thing he most wanted in the world and said he couldn't show his face while using it because it was a pre-paid cell phone. None the less when asked if it would be best for us just to return it he quickly grabbed it and ran upstairs. A few hours later he was begging for more time since he had already used what time we bought texting.

After being told by Dragonwife that it was going to be a low budget weekend with no eating out or mad rushes to the grocery store for chips, beer, ice cream, and a can of whip cream (wait that was just me fantasizing) after Miss Wiggles throw a fit saying she has no clothes that look nice she and Dragonwife ran off to the nearest upper end department store and come back with multiple bags fill with bright fancy new clothes.

I in turn now sit upstairs drinking some fine ice tea wondering when I can just get out of this town just for a weekend. Luckily one is coming real soon. I still can't get over the nagging feeling with a world going crazy on almost every level maybe the hokey pokey is really what its all about.

The Joys of Plumbing and Marriage.

After several days suffering from one of the worst stomach bugs ever to hit the family the worst is finally over. Tried writing something current but nothing is really working and my son Darth Spoilboy is absolutely dying to get to his MySpace account. So here is a recently discovered artifact from my last blog which was one of my first posts.

It started last night, "Honey", my wife called. Well, she didn't say honey but I prefer not to write the word she actually said. "You need to check the kid’s toilet, it’s stopped up again." What she really meant was for me to grab the plumber’s helper and go unblock the toilet that either my son or more than likely, in her eyes, I had messed up. She had been in a bad mood the last couple of days and I had got to the point where I felt it was best just to stay quiet and ride this hurricane out. So I grabbed the plumber’s friend and marched off to do my husbandly duty.

Details at this point are better left out but there was nothing I could do. The clog was not going anywhere and so I told my female Hitler, I mean my lovely bride, that this was not the usual situation and that I would have to go to the local Mega-Hardware store and buy a plumbing snake. My hunch was that our little girl had flushed one of her small toys down the toilet but it was Wednesday night and Lost was about to start and I did not want to talk about it anymore. Someone was supposed to get killed that night and I did not want to miss finding out who it was.
The next morning I was off to the local Mega-Hardware store to purchase a drain snake and a new wax ring for the toilet if it turned out that I would need a Plan B. The great thing about the mega stores is the choices you have. The bad thing is that no matter how much the commercials say that they have a knowledgeable staff I usually only meet those who were rejected for employment by fast food places. I walked to the row that held the plumbing supplies and found the section that held devices that I hoped would free up the blockage that I was fighting without me taking the entire throne apart. My issue was that several of the drain snakes were different sizes and appeared to be designed for different applications. Now according to my wife, during better days, and several girlfriends I had in the past I never ever had a size issue and I always have been good at different applications but that is a whole other subject. But since I did not want to cause a bigger problem I needed to know which one was right for home use. But the sales associate who worked in the plumbing section looked at me with the deer-in-headlights look when I asked which one of the drain snakes were right for a simple residential toilet. Well, when in doubt always punt, so she pulled out the fancy cell phone and called someone. After several minutes of saying a lot single word responses to apparent questions on the other end of the conversation she grabbed what looked to be a dildo off the shelf and handed it to me. She explained that one end of this device would be attached to a common water hose and then the device should be pushed down the toilet until it meets the blockage. Then, she continues to explain, you turn the water on and the device would expand and a high pressure water spray would come out from the opposite end of where you screwed on the water hose. Supposedly, this would be the most effective way of removing the blockage. I told her once again that the blockage was more than likely a child's toy but she assured me that the "plumbing expert" she talked with said this item was right for the job. I almost bought her advice and the item. But as she was walking away I happen to look on the back of the package and clearly saw the instructions that read that this item was not to be used on toilets. Visions of exploding toilets and the aftermath of such played out in my mind very clearly. I tossed the dildo looking item back on the shelf, grabbed my drain snake, and a new wax ring so I could move straight to Plan B if needed and paid for my stuff and left for home.

The drain snake is a fairly simple device, on one end is what looks to be a corkscrew for a wine bottle and on the other end is a piece that you turn to get the snake to expand down the hole basically, with it fully retracted you push it into the hole and start to turn. In theory at least at some point the corkscrew end should encounter the blockage and then, I guess, it either breaks up or as you turn it to retract again you will pull it out. My first attempt netted some...no let’s not go there. Let’s just say that after two attempts I pull out next to nothing and on the third I got the damn thing caught and for thirty minutes I could not pull it out. At that time I gave up and began working just to remove it from the toilet. About the time I started thinking of just buying and whole new toilet the snake broke free and I began preparing myself for Plan B.
Jumping ahead after removing the "water" from the toilet I removed the tank and carefully placed it inside the bathtub the base was removed and I moved it outside to begin the really disgusting part.

By this time of day the morning walkers were out. An older couple walked past my house as I was bringing the base out and could not help but to make a couple comments. Their comments were meant to be funny but I was not in the mood. The only reason it bothered me was by this time I was tired and slightly smelly. Knowing this prevented me from tossing water from the toilet on their cute, matching jogging suits. But getting back to business I figured whatever was jammed in the toilet was wedged very tightly so I took the water hose and pushed it up from the bottom with the water turned on. Right from the start I was able to push the water hose up to where I could feel the obstruction. The water hose was stiff enough that I could push it up but unlike the dildo that the Mega-Hardware store associate tried to sale me I did not have to worry about the damn toilet cracking. I finally felt that I was going to make some progress. So I started gently thrusting more and more with the water hose hoping that it would fall out. Ignoring the world around me I started saying things like "yeah baby" and "I know you’re ready". It was at this time that I looked up and saw the neighborhood divorcee walking past looking straight at me and laughing. This is a woman who any man would more than likely sell his soul to be with, she is that drop dead glorious. She has always been very friendly towards me but has never given me any hint that she might be interested in me but having her see me like that was very embarrassing. Maybe, you could say that I saw all my secret fantasies being flushed down the toilet.

Looking back on this whole event I realize that compared to other more serious problems this was very minor. But given that my wife had been on the warpath lately and she had been leaving very long "honey do" lists that had damn well better be finished when she returns home taking all day to fish out a child toy in a toilet that had just been installed three months ago was a major pain in the ass. But right after the divorcee walked by I looked down to find that my daughter's small Spongebob Squarepants toy had fallen out of the toilet. I cleaned up and reinstalled the toilet without any further adventures. I then called my bride at work to tell her about all this. My lovely wife's opinion of my handling of the situation was, as expected, full of criticisms of how I could have done everything quicker. But of course when she returned home and was talking on the phone, deep in conversation to one of her knitting class girlfriends, I laid the newly freed Spongebob close by and she quickly picked it up absent-mindedly playing with it. It actually took twenty seconds before she realized I hadn't cleaned it off. The reaction on her face when she realized why Spongebob was so sticky made up for the rest of the day. Now, a couple of weeks later and after we have made up I can laugh about the whole thing.