Jen Lancaster - If You Were Here

Yesterday he spent his morning installing a new switch that cost only four dollars but took three hours. After this bit of fecklessness, he replaced the whole junction box with zero success, and today he plans on rewiring the whole garage.

You know what? I’m just going to mow the lawn myself.

I change into old sneakers, cutoff sweatpants, and an ancient sorority T-shirt, stick in my earbuds, and select my sounds-of-the-nineties playlist as I plod down to the garage. I glower at the lantern and it’s all I can do not to throw a couple of landscaping rocks at it.

We inherited a lawn mower with the house, and like everything else here, it’s completely antiquated. Mac cleaned the blade and filled it with gas and he says it works, but considering it looks like a prop from the movie Road Warrior , I’m a bit skeptical. I wheel it down the driveway and let myself into the gated part of the yard.

I bend across the rusty motor and give the toggle dealie a tentative yank. I don’t want to pull too hard, because I feel like the rope will break. Nothing happens, so I pull harder. The engine sputters to life and then dies, so I probably have no choice but to tug harder. I yank the toggle with all my might and the mower roars to life. And I do mean roar. Even with my iPod up full blast, I can’t make out a single word Alanis Morissette is singing, so I turn it off. I don’t need to hear her to understand exactly how ironic this whole situation is. I do leave the earbuds in to protect my hearing.

Cutting the grass isn’t as hard as I anticipated, because this mower surprisingly has one of the self-propelling features. I thought I’d have to push this aging bucket of bolts like Sisyphus and his boulder, but really it’s more a matter of steering. What’s frustrating is that the grass is so long that I have to empty the bag every five minutes.

Also, apparently since we no longer have landscapers, we no longer have people who are paid to pick up dog crap. I retrieve what I can see, but due to the height of the grass, most of those treasures are hidden. Every time I run over poop, the pile explodes into tiny shards that spray me in the legs. I figure the tetanus shot I had last month will protect me from any doody-borne pathogens, so I keep going.

By the time I complete this chore, I’ve filled six brown paper landscaping bags, and now I have to haul them all the way up to the curb for pickup.

I’d ask for Mac’s help, but he’s taken off for the Depot again . I’d simply leave the bags for him, but since I want this done now, 147I’m stuck humping everything a tenth of a mile down the drive. The gravel grates so hard against the bottom when I drag them that a couple of the bags burst and then I have to rake up all the clippings and shards o’ crap before it occurs to me to use the wheelbarrow.

By the time I finish the job, I stink and I’m itchy and I’m coated with sweat and grass clippings and dog poop, plus I’m pretty much dyed green from the knees down. I put everything away in the garage and find myself entertaining very unhappy thoughts every time I glance at the dead light fixture.

Then, like Wile E. Coyote or Elmer Fudd, I get a lightbulb of an idea.

I dash back to the house, grab a cheap floodlight bulb, and hoof it back to the garage. I gingerly set the ladder against the garage and, with much trepidation, begin to climb. I’ve nestled the bulb in my cleavage for safekeeping. Once I’m at the top, I unscrew the fixture, take out the new bulb, and screw in the one from my shirt.

I scurry back down the ladder and hit the switch and… in the words of Clark W. Griswold. . Hallelujah!

Initially I’m thrilled the lamp finally works, but then I add up the expense and opportunity costs we racked up because Mac wouldn’t listen to me and I begin to seethe.

I’m still standing in front of the garage when Mac pulls up. “Hey, I fixed it! It’s working! I guess the wires righted themselves somehow.”

I pull the forty-five-dollar bulb out of my shirt and silently point to it.

“So the bulb was the problem from the get-go? Huh. Well, hand it over. I’m going to take it back to Home Depot and give them a piece of my mind,” Mac huffs.

Then I take the pricey bulb and fling it against the closed garage door with all of my time-wasted, fecal-matter-splattered might. Because of its odd construction, I don’t get the same satisfaction of shattering, say, a fluorescent bulb, but it fractures enough to truly be good and broken.

“There,” I say. “Saved you a trip.”

Okay, Mia, focus. You can do this.

I look down at my hands hovering over my keyboard and I will them to move.

Nothing.

No response.

My fingers are as immobile as a couple of teamsters on a coffee break.

I wonder if writer’s block used to feel more devastating back when people wrote on typewriters. A blinking cursor on an empty Word document is bad enough, but then I imagine how much worse it would be to have a whole empty sheet of paper in front of me, with a ream of pristine pages sitting undisturbed in a box on my desk, taunting me with the sheer volume of incomplete work. I bet there’d be something satisfying about a wire trash can full of balledup pages, though. At least then I’d have a visual measure of having tried. Right now all I have is a blank screen.

I’m desperate to get this damn novel finished. I’m so close, but I can’t pull it all together because my ending feels forced and false. I want to wrap this manuscript up in a big, happy bow but I’m not feeling it.

Part of it stems from the whole Amos-and-Miriam thing. I can barely (figuratively) look them in the eye. Even though their sex scene wasn’t for public consumption, I feel ashamed that I sold out their innocence for the dream of granite countertops and indoor flush toilets and cabinets actually attached to the walls.

And now I don’t even have any of those things, and I’m too embarrassed to carry on their story line.

I so want to be done with this, yet I lack the inspiration to get there.

Maybe the problem is that I tend to draw for inspiration on my relationship with Mac, and right now, that’s not terribly inspiring. The strain of living in this shell of a house is starting to show. We’re both stressed out and anxious, and he blames me for talking him into this place, and I blame him for not having the DIY competence he’s always claimed. We’re at a stalemate. A subfloor-covered, barewalled-having stalemate.

I don’t even know where he is right now. He stormed off earlier after I may or may not have gotten a bit shrieky about our credit card statement. But he spent eight thousand dollars this month at Home Depot in readying his workshop for our renovations, and all we have to show for it is one flushing toilet. We don’t even have a functional shower yet. Last night we struggled so long and hard to install a kitchen cabinet that when we finally gave up, I was covered with sweat and filth. It was too late to hit the gym, so I took my towel and a little plastic caddy full of shampoo and soap down to the lake to bathe.

There’s something particularly shameful about being a thirtysomething adult with no choice but to wash my own ass outdoors.

My point is, if I’d known we had eight thousand dollars to throw around, I’d have spent that on a rental house with a fully functional bathroom.

Anyway, it’s probably best he’s not here. I’m in no mood for conversation. I just need to concentrate and maybe, just maybe, I’ll get through this.

Tock, tock, tock, tock, tock, tock, tock!

What is that noise? I look up from my manuscript and glance over at the dogs. Is Duckie scratching or something? Nope, he and Daisy are both out cold on their doggy beds. Weird.