He says, she does

Okay, I’ve taken a fair amount of crap about the drain cleaning post so I feel the need to explain some things.

First of all, Thystle, I can’t use what I don’t have: my eyelashes are invisible without mascara and, well, if there were breast mascara, I’d use that, too.
And Stepmonster, the reason I have a husband is to keep the toilet seat up and wet towels on the floor. Really? Yours does plumbing?
Meg? I would love to call a professional, but this was the sink in the master bath. The amount of housekeeping attention that a part of my house receives is directly proportionate to the amount of public display it gets. The rest of the house is bad enough but if I brought a plumber to ground zero, well, I would have to kill him before he called the EPA and I just didn’t have time to bury a body.

It’s rather ironic that I grew up in a family where Dad was the Fixer-of-Everything. He was our electrician, plumber, mechanic and carpenter. My mother was the painter, seamstress, cook (I use that term loosely), financial whiz, picture hanger and exterminator. I was so intent on finding a mate who could cook, so I wouldn't have to, that I totally overlooked all that other stuff. When Homer and I met, I still lived within 10 miles of Dad so I never even thought to check Homer’s home repair references. Oops.

Then we moved a thousand miles away from our families and bought a house and set about trying to muddle through the little things that needed attention. This husband of mine brought at least 200 Craftsman tools to the marriage so I wasn’t naïve in thinking things would get fixed. But then Homer started getting assigned to work projects that sent him from one end of the country to the other… sometimes for weeks at a time. He did manage to come home enough to knock me up a couple of times – as if I didn’t have enough to do. But a clogged toilet really can’t wait for ‘the man to get home’ when the man is in Tennessee until next month. If you think cleaning out a drain is gross, try living with the smell of a clogged one. After a week, the dog even starts to screw up his nose in disgust.

So you think to yourself “it’s not rocket science, I can figure this out” and you do what you have to do AND you save $50 to spend on NEW SHOES. Then you get a little braver and you start looking for trouble by replacing functioning faucets and light fixtures with nicer ones. Pretty soon, you are so full of yourself that you have started demolishing a cast iron tub with a sledge hammer screaming “I am WOMAN!” Then you find out that your state does not require any sort of license or even training to use power tools and Santa brings you a beautiful table saw for Christmas (which you engrave your name all over in the event of a divorce). And before you know it, if you still have all your fingers, you are in charge of remodeling and maintenance.
I may have mentioned before that I count beans for a living and Homer is an engineer. That might lead you to believe that I would handle family financial matters and he would, well, engineer things. You would be wrong. Over the years we have determined that cross-occupationing (I just made that up) is the only way to go. I would much rather tile a bathroom floor than research mutual funds. At the end of the day I am sick of financialish things. As for hiring the professionals, I am pretty picky about how the job gets done and I’d rather not have to nag strange men with low-slung pants into meeting my specifications. I’m a one-man nagger of a guy who rides his pants too HIGH. My exceptions are plumbing if pipes need to be moved, changed, or soldered and electricity because as Homer says “If it bites and you can’t see it, don’t mess with it.” I have to agree with Homer there.

Lynn and Sleepdeprivedmomma – bravo for having done it yourselves! SDM – any points you lost for hurling were more than made up for by the fact that you were 8 months pregnant. That just seems physically impossible.
And Cindy? Please come back from Wonderland. Homer contracted the yard care out to Omega years ago and we have not allowed him to even lift the hood of a vehicle since the unfortunate vocabulary lesson of 1993 caused Lola to ask me what a *bleep-bleeper* was.
“Oh, honey, that’s something under the hood of a car and if your grandma ever hears you say that she will be stuck in Hail Mary mode forever.” Yeah, after she strangles her son with her rosary.