It's a dirty job...

I wind up watching tv with Mr W a lot at night.  There's only so much Nickelodeon a girl can stand, so I take my book and set up camp in our room with him. 

(We won't count how many times he looks over at me to say something only to discover I've nodded off and am drooling over said book.)

We have to find a happy medium, too.  No chick shows, and he lays off on whatever-extreme-fighting match that might be on.  Which leaves us with the History Channel, random celebrity poker shows, and the Discovery Channel (by far my favorite.)  Well, and ESPN, of course.

I've watched so many episodes of American Chopper, I think I can fabricate a gas tank.

I shiver through the Deadliest Catch.  Those guys are just nuts.

But the show that really has my attention right now is Dirty Jobs.

Let me ruin it right now for you, honey.  I think the host, Mike Rowe, is just adorable. 

It's a dirty job, alright, and somebody's gotta do it.   Dig that voice--even when he's covered in the mess of the day, he still sounds fantastic.  :D

We had a dirty job of our own to do last week.

We'd come in, and we were getting all the trash together to throw out.   As I walk in the door, Mr W makes a comment about how "I still smell that weird odor."  Great, I thought.  Here we go again, on how the house smells like ass and it's a subtle testimony to my housecleaning (the lack thereof).

In this house, "smell that weird odor" never ever bodes well.   I'd smelled it too, eau de spoiled milk.   I suggested to him that I thought the kids might've missed their mark, and a wayward wrapper or string cheese had not made it into the trash can but might be languishing amongst the cleaning products box next to it.

I'd seen Mr W with his rear end hanging out the bottom of that cabinet just the other day, so I assumed he'd done a thorough check.

I should know better.  He is just not good with bad smells.   I'd emptied the dishwasher earlier, and the smell was still there.

Hmmm.

Cautiously, I opened the cabinet under the sink where the cleaning products live.  I start moving things around, hoping not to find anything toooo awful.  Like a dead mouse or hidden colony of ants.   Or worse, cockroaches setting up shop.

I found liquid under the box of cleaners.  Under everything on that side.  Oh, and a wayward ice cream bar wrapper--hello, eau de spoiled milk.  Mystery almost solved.  I was convinced a bottle of Lysol had leaked or something, and mixed with the wrapper to taint the area in eewww.  

I had one more theory, though.  I ran water through the sink, and watched, and waited.  Sure enough, I was rewarded with drip, drip, drip--we had a leak.

So I called in my own master of the dirty job as backup. 

Turned out it was the garbage disposal.  It's about 10 years old, but in a household like ours, I'd add about 5 years to it just out of respect that it has survived this long.  We have really hard water here, and it had eaten a hole right through the housing. 

Dammit.  I have children to feed.  Dinner dishes to clean.  Why is he using the tip of his screwdriver to explore the rot, opening the hole more?  No! 

At first I panic.  Sure, disposals are not that expensive, but ugh, installation...they always get you there.

Heeeeyy...."If I go get a new one right now, can you install it??"

"Yeah, I think so."

I run out and get one.  We get it out of the package, and he starts working on it.

Why isn't he reading the directions?  Say nothing, woman, let the man work.

He gets going, and I wisely leave the room any time I feel my two cents coming up.  Surprisingly, this is not so hard to do.  I'm watching, and a couple of the comments I did make came in useful.  Otherwise, I was the lovely assistant.  The coolest thing of all is that I threw out quite a bit of stuff, and now when I look under the sink, it's neat.

When he turned it on, and it worked, he was my hero. 

He may never have to do a dish again.

But I wonder, would he mind voice lessons?