The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Maybe you haven’t set up your funeral arrangements yet, nothing you really want to spend time thinking about while you’re healthy and mobile, not when you need every spare moment to cruise the internet. Chances are you haven’t even drawn up a will or one of those Do-Not-Resuscitate living wills so the Hippocratic docs won’t keep you on life support until the relatives are bankrupt. I haven’t done any of that either so I’m not casting the first stone, believe me.

But I was reading about a woman who wanted to be planted under a Gravenstein apple tree, her favorite fruit, great for pies and so she was launching a company, Recompose, that would compost your mortal coil, dust to soil, then spread on the garden you may or may not have. Nothing like a Grammy Pie, you’re thinking. And yeah, I get it, waste not want not, but it seems like an idea whose time has maybe not quite arrived if it’s even left the station.

We have a compost pile by our garden, toss in the kitchen scraps and the last of the garden when we do the fall cleanup, maybe some leaves and occasionally some manure, some wood ash and there’d still be room for grandpa. The squirrels forage there and probably some rats who check out what offerings we tossed in today. A lot of red worms, plenty of bugs that like decomposing vegetable matter. A regular ecosystem down there. And when it’s done composting, we spread it on the flowers and vegetables and fruit trees. Part of the cycle of life.

I kind of like the idea of returning to the earth, not with a silk lined casket, just toss the shovels of dirt directly and let nature do its job. Cremation, well, it’s cheap and sanitary and for those who like keeping a bit of the Loved One on the mantle, probably fine. We have a glassblowing buddy who makes little glass vessels using some of the ash, very elegant, nice paper weights. My mom is in a cheesy urn at the old man’s house. Kind of gives me the creeps, tell you the truth. My neighbor, Guitar Bob, keeps his papa in a coffee can, says he’s going to take him back to North Carolina someday. He won’t. His dad will end up in the Camano Island recycle with the bottles and cans and plastics, count on it.

It’s good, I guess, to have alternatives. No doubt the funeral homes will get a jump on this before the Gravenstein lady, show the bereaved the Cadillac compost bin with the imported French worms and the sterilized manure mixings. Maybe even provide the favorite fruit tree or an indoor house plant if eating dear old Uncle Fred makes the client queasy. If you can’t afford the Top End, they’ll have something akin to our own compost bin, sort of a mini-Potter’s Field. Hopefully without the rats, but then again, part of the Cycle of Life, right?

Let me review the previous episode of Plumbing Hell in case some of you missed it, ignored it or, like me, probably tried to forget it. We had a leak in the upstairs bathroom’s sink, enough to run down through the ceiling into the basement bathroom. No big deal, you’re probably thinking, but if that’s what you were thinking, then I know you are the type of person who dials his cellphone for the closest plumber to come out and fix the problem. For us on the South End, that has never been an option. The trip out and back costs more than whatever was wrong in the first place.

No, we do what our predecessors here in the nettle jungles of the backwash have always done. We shudder, we perspire, we break into palpitations and finally, after an appropriate procrastination, we take a good hard belt from straight from the whisky bottle and without bothering to wipe our chins, we bore in. Tools come out, the cursing starts, the whimpering follows. If you recall, I had no more begun to work on that sink when an obstinate inlet valve snapped off the hot water line, spewing 40 gallons of a fast draining hot water heater onto the floor until I finally got a bucket or actually two under the floodwaters.

Yesterday I reassembled the entire kit and caboodle, what we semi-professional plumbers refer to as the ‘whole shitaree’. Got the valve on okay, lifted the hundred pound century old pedestal sink into position, got the drain pipes reassembled and voila, turned on the taps. And yeah, the same stupid leak was still there. Plus a new one. Sure, I cursed, I cast blame near and far, I wept. But … I knew this was the probable, not the possible, outcome. Plumbing is not a one step venture. It is a journey of a thousand miserable steps.

I’m not going to bore you with a litany of what followed; suffice it to say, the procedure was reversed, more parts were disassembled and since they are a century old, small washer screws inside the brass faucets crumbled and had to be drilled out. Of course the screw threads had dissolved with time too. An experienced hand at plumbing like myself, KNOWS this will happen. It’s why he didn’t replace them the last time even though they were leaking then. This time, however, I dared to tread where others dread, a motto I may copyright for when I incorporate my plumbing bizness.

I’m into the third day, three or four trips to the hardware store, and no, I haven’t rehooked up the water yet. What’s the rush? The mizzus is out of town galavanting in New Orleans, so what if I have company coming in two days. Plenty of time for a pro to make the necessary repairs, clean up the damage, put away the tools and pretend that all is well in the homeland. Picture of idyllic rural living, eh? If things don’t go well, and you and I both know it’s looking iffy as of this moment, the guests can do what I do, wash their hands in the bathtub, brush their teeth over the toilet. At least I’m not making them use the outhouse.