Hissy-Fits

Ruff Life, la Parguera, PR, 2008

Am I the only 57-yr-old who still has hissy-fits…or the danger of?  I’m writing this now in order to keep from demolishing one corner inside my 8-by-16-foot home.  Offhandedly referred to as the bathroom, it is 3ft by 3ft-8in; I just measured.  

I shouldn’t complain; after all, it’s more than what I had on Ruff Life.  One redeeming feature of the trawler was the electric head, or macerator.  Just push a button; grinds up everything.  Every sailboat or catamaran I visited seemed to have a different order for their manual flushing systems…pull lever, pump several times, pee, push back in…but either I was too intoxicated from Happy Hours or that was the beginning of the end for my memory cells.

Towards the end of life in Puerto Rico, things were falling apart faster than I could hope to repair, and that pertained not only to Ruff Life but my relationship with the Captain.  My therapy is to paint, so a faux-painted piece of pine replaced the costly teak floor which finally rotted through; it doubled as the shower floor and always gave me the creeps.  The bilge was just underneath, and I constantly worried about dropping something small.  A hand-held hose hung behind the mahogany door, an odd contraption which was hinged in the middle; it folded in half (length-wise) in order to get in and close for privacy.  On a boat, right.

 The hot water heater consumed too much power, so cold showers for 12 years was de rigueur, unless house-sitting.  But especially after a hard morning’s snorkeling, the cool water felt great.  A small window was at eye level, and if Czar wasn’t sticking his head inside, it was possible to see over the side of the boat.  It’s not that bad; you get used to it.

Collie Czar

Fast forward.  For the first few weeks in my trailer, I didn’t have a clue as to how to use the hot water heater, and I feared consuming too much propane.  Besides, it was summertime.  But Ruff Life was in the tropics, not the mountains of Oregon, and the final few years I’d been experiencing hot flashes to boot.

Turns out the water heater's a simple thing to master, as was changing the propane tanks and using the hydraulic jack.  I keep telling (men) that I don’t mind doing the work; I just don’t know what needs to be done.  The Captain used to admonish me,

"It's not that you can't do such-and-such; you just won't learn."

So last night I looked up on the Internet how to fix my fiberglass shower pan, which I heard crrrack whilst showering.  I'm always looking for and filling hairline cracks, I hope, with Zap-a-Gap, the best glue for everything, but this time I left a definite heel depression, and all I have is Epoxy.  Apparently I can use it on fiberglass, but even if that doesn’t work I'll try, for myself, what I watched the Captain do for years: patch, patch, patch.  He got messy; I guess it doesn’t matter, as long as the job gets done.

Ruff Life floating mural

I kept the small heater on all night in preparation of this morning’s repair, but I forgot that I turned off the shower via the faucets and not the plunger-thing, and left the showerhead in the open, not closed, position. It took me a moment to realize that nothing was coming out of the sink, and the reason why. That’s when I began writing.

It helped.  Now I know what I was really angry about:  no one to ask, “Fix it, honey, please.”  No one on whom to dump the problem.  I keep crossing my fingers that nothing mechanical will go ever wrong again, but that's pretty pie-in-the-sky.  At least now I don't panic.  Every problem has a solution.

 

Young girls and boys should be forced to attend classes in basic car mechanics, home repair, self defense, how to cook, wash clothes and discourge farting in public.  You can decide which categories pertain.