First I’d like to make it crystal clear that when it comes to septic tanks, I am cursed. It’s the only aspect of country living that I truly despise. And my initiation into the nightmares of how waste is disposed of once you leave the city limits began about five months after buying my house.
But that’s another story. This one concerns something called a lift tank pump. Horrid, filthy water flows there from the septic tank, to be pumped into a mound-type drain field. Or it’s supposed to do that. If your pump doesn’t stop working….
Which this one did. So I called a handyman who, along with his wife, came late this afternoon to fix it for me. I’m not going to go into detail about how disgusting it was to stand in my yard while they were working on it, but I think I might have made use of a gas mask, had one been available.
The entire time they were kneeling over the opening to the lift tank, they would wipe their hands on an orange towel because…well you know, they had to actually touch stuff in the tank in order to get the new pump hooked up.
Did I mention that I have an OCD-like thing about clean hands? That’s important to take note of here. Seriously, it’s not actually OCD, but it’s a close runner up.
So you know that anything having to do with a septic tank is going to be something I avoid like the plague. And I did. Even when the guy said there might be a problem with the electrical box in the tank and I should come over and take a look so he could explain it to me.
Um….
Huh? Actually, you know what? I’m not going to know what I’m looking at anyway, so why don’t you just tell me what it is and I’ll call around for parts tomorrow. (I heard his wife say, “She’s not going to walk over here.” And she was right. I wasn’t going to.)
So we stroll back to their truck and stand there chatting for awhile, making sure the mosquitoes got a full course meal in the process. All of a sudden she swats at one of the little bloodsuckers on my arm. With the orange towel.
Oh….my….God….
From the corner of my eye I see my daughter just about double over and I know she’s trying not to laugh. I didn’t pay too much attention though, because I was too busy trying to keep my chin from hitting the ground-and wondering how many times I was going to have to wash my arm before it felt clean again.
A minute later she swatted one off my neck. My first thought was that I was incredibly thankful that, due to the extreme heat today, I’d pinned my hair up. My second was to remember not to move my head at all because I didn’t want to ‘get any of it’ on the collar of my shirt. Because that collar would be touching my hair on its way off. Just as soon as I got in the house!
I know the woman was just trying to be helpful, but whoa… Septic tank germs are like the mother of all germs!
So anyway, they got in their truck and my daughter and I turned and headed for our front door. I swear that the couple hadn’t even pulled out of our driveway before she started laughing. Hard…
You see, my daughter is well acquainted with my germ ‘issues.’ And she found the whole ‘orange towel’ incident incredibly, extremely, unutterably hilarious.
Unlike her mother…
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