When last we met I was worried about the septic system, thinking I clogged it up by flushing my lady corks down the toilet. I was frustrated by the assimilation process of living a homesteading lifestyle and pooping outside in an outhouse. I stomped around for a day thinking I had caused us to enter Operation Outhouse. I brewed and boiled over my lack of experience. To some it may have resembled a pity party. I like to call it venting.
When we reached Day Four, we, the residents of Homestead Lane, were standing at the brink of an event none of us wanted to happen. We had consulted the septic repair man and taking his professional advice, because he knows his shit, the next step in troubleshooting the septic situation was to sift through the septic tank to find the filter and figure out what was blocking said filter. Ahem.... as if we all didn't know what it was. But nevertheless, here we were - me, Silas (the man friend), and Aaron (man friend's brother and our neighbor) - toiletteless, cold and annoyed. One of us had to stick something in the pool of shit and find that filter, and I wasn't about to let either one of them find it with a week's worth of my tampons jamming things up, so, deep breathe, I volunteered.
I would do it. End of discussion. When either one of them caused the back up then they could do it, but this time all signs pointed to me, so I would do it. And immediately after I volunteered, they boys deduced that fishing around with a stick wouldn't do any good. It would have to be an arm. Ok. I would suffer the smell and the indignity and the personal pain of sticking my arm down into the septic tank and fishing around for the filter. Into a utility glove went my hand. Into a plastic grocery bag went my gloved hand. And into an extra strength garbage bag went my gloved, bagged hand. And around my wrist went duct tape. Several wraps.
I tucked my hair up under my wool beanie and marched over to the septic tank, a parade of onlookers behind me - namely Silas, Aaron, and lucky me, his sister and brother-in-law visiting for the Thanksgiving holiday had just shown up. This was it; my chance to show everyone that I was serious about homesteading it on Homestead Lane. I would show them all that I was no pansy. I looked around at my audience who was looking back at me with sympathy and surprise. Then, much like a farmer who is castrating cows, I didn't think about it, I just did it. I got down on the cold, wet earth and lowered my wrapped arm into the shit soup.
I quickly found that my arm wasn't long enough to do any productive exploring, so I had to really tip myself further into the tank to be useful. My arm waded around unfamiliar territory while I breathed in and out of my mouth and tried my hardest to think of sunny beaches and gardens of fragrant flowers and anything that sounded and smelled better and felt better than the situation I was in, but all I could smell was feces and all I could hear was the click of Aaron's phone as he took pictures. And then a long tuft of hair fell out of my beanie and grazed the side of the septic tank, and then my gloved hand broke through the plastic bag, and then shit poured into the garbage bag, just one layer from my skin, and then I'd been stirring the shit soup long enough to prove my toughness and it was done. Game over. No filter found.
I stood without victory but with a shitload of pride. Literally. I had done a dirty job that Silas assumed he would just do because he was a guy and I was a gal and why would I want to stick my hand in a septic tank. I smiled and nodded my head as I looked at my approving audience. Then I immediately ripped off the bags around my arm and sprinted to the shower, hoping that someone had installed a decontamination chamber in our bathroom.
The next day the septic tank repair man came and informed us that it was not the filter that was causing the problem, it was a malfunctioning hose. The filter was fine. Shit happened. I rose above it. I think I'm gonna make it.
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