Love and Mess

The other day my friend Beth Vogt tagged me in her Facebook status which linked to a blog post by Jessica R. Patch. Naturally I checked out Jessica’s post titled “Nothing Says I Love You like Dog Poo.”

Her husband’s brave sacrifice in the face…er...rump of poo made me think of some particularly gross tasks my husband took on for me. I remembered the time Monkey threw up all over our bed after Kory’d gone to work. I tried to clean it up, but being pregnant, my efforts took the situation from bad to worse. I tried to make it to the toilet before I threw up, but I ended up splattering the master bathroom. When Kory came home that evening he had two puke messes to clean up. I’ll never forget him standing on our bed, running the carpet cleaner over our mattress.

But that’s certainly not the only time my husband got stuck with a nasty job. Several years ago we had a family reunion that overlapped with the wedding of two good friends. The day of the wedding, we hosted our extended family for breakfast. My dog thought she was a guest too and snagged some sausage patties, wolfing them down before anyone could stop her. My family headed out to their activities for the day and we left for the wedding. We stopped by the house during a break between the ceremony and reception and discovered that the sausage had violently exited my dog. So Kory, still in his groomsman tux, got down on his hands and knees and scrubbed the floor. He said cleaning up dog diarrhea in a tux was a surreal experience he never wanted to repeat.

Kory came to the rescue again the very evening after I’d read Jessica’s post. As we were getting ready for bed, my sink filled up with water which meant the clog in the drain, which I call Sink Thing, had grown to full-pipe capacity. Now, I’ve made an effort to dislodge Sink Thing in the past, if you can call donning full protective gear and poking at it with a rubber gloved-finger an effort. I’ve also poured Clorox on Sink Thing and shouted at it a time or two.

But Sink Thing remains a fixture in our bathroom. Then one day as I threw my work-out pants over the side of our rarely used bathtub, I discovered that Sink Thing had a friend. A strange little dried-up brown object sat near the tub drain. Naturally I recoiled from the mysterious pellet. Instead of removing it, like a normal person would do, I took to calling it Tub Turd.

We might as well go ahead and pause for everyone to say, “Eww!” Yes, I am a terrible housekeeper.

We continued with Sink Thing and Tub Turd until one day I needed to use my bathtub to launder my pile of handwash only clothes. I braved Tub Turd’s lair and discovered that Tub Turd was really a harmless fuzz ball. I still wore gloves to remove it.

But Sink Thing is another story. I know what Sink Thing is—a gross, sludgy combination of my hair and soap. Why does clean, sudsy soap turn to black goo in the drain? Or stain your grout that slimy pink color? Isn’t that the opposite of what soap should do?

Anyway, back to our evening routine. I pointed out the flooding caused by Sink Thing, and Kory presented me with a long, thin, bendable wire with what looked like a tiny dog brush attached to the end.

I took it from him and frowned. He pointed to my sink, but I already knew what I was supposed to do. Gingerly I plunged my hand into the full sink and inserted the dogbrush end of the tool into the drain.

“You’re going to have to go deeper than that,” Kory told me.

I shot him my best sad puppy dog expression and shoved it another inch or so in and wiggled it around. I nearly gagged when bits of Sink Thing started oozing up into the standing water. About this time, Kory got impatient and came over and crammed the snakey tool all the way down the drain and started hauling up sludge from the u-bend. I stepped aside, suppressing a triumphant grin, and grabbed some paper towels to hand to Kory as he dismembered Sink Thing.

With Sink Thing vanquished and my water draining properly, I gave my husband my best you’re-my-hero smile. I wonder if all those girls who think love is a vampire watching you sleep would be shocked to learn that love is really a thirty-something guy snaking a drain for his wife. Or cleaning up vomit, while she watches from the doorway, one hand on her preggo belly and one covering her mouth. Or cleaning up her dog’s poo wearing a tux because she mysteriously disappeared.

Yep. The grosser the mess the truer the love!