©istock/Jason Lugo
Contrahension is a word my husband coined this morning to describe my feeling of anxiety surrounding appointments with service people in our home. Contractor + apprehension, get it? He’s so clever, he should really submit things to Word Fugitives instead of giving them to me for my humble blog.
It starts with making the appointment and the offer of various windows of time, none of which are suitable. 8-10 am? Can’t do it, have to take the kids to school. 10-12? Will miss pre-K pick up. 12-2? Hello? Lunch and nap time! 2-4? Will miss grade school pick up. 4-6? Did you miss where I have children?
Left with a series of impossible choices, I pick the least bad and resolve to make due.
For today’s appointment I chose 10-12 because I figured it would give me enough time to tidy up but not too many hours of trying to maintain cleanliness. In an ideal world, this would just be a matter of putting the breakfast dishes away and making sure all the dirty socks were picked up from the bedroom floor.
I do not live in an ideal world.
We have been struck down with a horrible plague in my family, you might have heard me mention it once or twice even though I’m not a complainer. Things have been left undone. Right now there are four small children living in this house (I don’t know if it helps or hurts the housekeeping issue that the eldest is with his dad for the school year) and a week without a full scale down to the baseboards clean leaves the house in ruins. I estimate it’s been at least a month since we’ve had that kind of clean. Shambles. We are living in shambles. Oh we do the dishes and the laundry is clean if not folded, but it doesn’t behoove anyone to focus on any one surface for more than a nanosecond.
Did I mention the electrician was coming to fix the lights in the dining room and bathroom? I couldn’t even see what kind of dirt would be revealed when he got the lights working again!
Clearly I needed to do the kind of clean that shouted “We are basically good, clean people with decent values who have lots of children and have been sick, but underneath it all there is clean”. It wouldn’t do to have it look like I frantically tidied up before he arrived because let’s face it, things were far to gone to get away with “oh my house sparkles all of the time” so I had to look like I hadn’t had time to do any cleaning that morning, because of all the children underfoot but give the general impression that I am a good hausfrau who spends much time with a bucket of hot soapy water.
Don’t ask me why I would care, this is not the kind of blog where we go into reasons.
So, the hand prints were scrubbed from the fridge, but I left a few coffee cups and cereal bowls in the sink. I swept the floor but only spot cleaned a few large spots with a wet rag and my feet. All of the pajamas were picked up off the living room floor and put in the laundry room, but I left a couple of toys on the floor. I think they call this “staging” in the real estate business.
Stage set, and I had twenty minutes before the appointment. This is when true contrahension begins.
Twenty minutes before appointment time window (ATW) begins
Okay, yes, I know he said 10 am, but what if he’s early? Better not start anything or I might be interrupted. A new pot of coffee might be nice, but then I’d have to offer some and every time I do it’s rejected. Why do people here not like strong coffee? It isn’t even hardly bitter, that’s just intensity. Plus, I’d have to open the fridge and I only cleaned the outside.
One minute before ATW
And a small child poops. This happens without fail one minute before anything. My heart thuds as I race to change the soiled diaper and get it out of the house and wash my hands. Whew, the dreaded knock at the door mid-wipe didn’t happen. I kind of feel like I need to poop though, but I will concentrate on other things.
ATW
Peek out the door. Nobody is there.
5 Minutes post ATW
IM husband:
You said 10-12, right?
Yes, 10-12
He’s not here yet, should I wait?
I’m in a conference call.
10 Minutes past ATW
Stew a bit over having chat cut short by conference call. Tell children they can only eat snacks in bathtub so there won’t be a mess. March everyone upstairs to eat in bathtub. Become paranoid that I won’t hear the electrican knock. March everyone back downstairs to get the phone (can’t leave children alone even in an empty tub. Safety first, always). Finish goldfish. Hope the crumbs don’t clog the tub, can’t bear to call plumbers again.
20 Minutes past ATW
Allow the children to watch wholesome, educational programming on PBS in case the electrian is the judgmental type. Would like to read PerezHilton but instead pull up Wall Street Journal online. I do not know what they are talking about. Make quick tweet then hide tweetdeck in case electrician glances at the monitor. Do not want him to be able to find me online in case I badmouth him later in the day.
35 Minutes past ATW
Hungry. Can’t enjoy food knowing that the knock could come at any minute. I can’t eat around people I don’t know except at a restaurant.
45 Minutes past ATW
IM husband again. His status says “idle” but I know he’s there and can see me, he’d just rather “conference”. Feeling of urgency in the bowels. I push it away. Not literally, mentally.
58 Minutes past ATW
Hope fading fast, he might never come. We’ll have to live with a dark dining room and downstairs bathroom forever. We’ll continue to eat in the living room. I imagine my kids going to school and telling the teachers sordid tales and having social workers come by, just to check on us. Vow to send in more organic baby carrots and string cheese to solidify my reputation as a good parent.
1 Hour past ATW
IM husband again. This time he pops up long enough to say the electrician might have called while he was on the conference call. My throat tightens at the possibility that we missed our window. My husband disappears again. Feeling of utter dejection. The sun shines in and illuminates how dirty my floors really are; it doesn’t matter for nobody will see them today.
1 Hour 6 Minutes past ATW
“Mommy, mommy, there’s a man at the door!” Could it be? Could he have come anyway without the five minutes away courtesy call? How rude! I could have been pooping for all he knows. Not that I’m the kind of person that uses the toilet within 6 hours of meeting somebody new, but he could hardly know that. I go to the door anyway, even though I am a bit put out.
The Service Call
I feel flustered and ashamed and make my apologies for not fixing the problem myself and making his job so difficult. Would he like a cold drink? I will get him one as long as he promises not to follow me into the kitchen? No, okay, I will go and try to figure out something to do that in inconspicuous yet leaves me easily available for questions way.
But no, the children are fascinated by this visitor and want to watch him work. I can’t imagine what it must be like to try and fix a circuit with three small people sitting in a semicircle around you, staring as if to will you to give them a blowtorch and I try to pry them away without prompting a tantrum. He says it’s okay, children are curious but I feel defeated.
He finds the problem and tells the wiring was done in a strange way and I tell him that this house was owned by an electrician, isn’t that the way it always is? Ha ha. He doesn’t seem to find this funny. I ask how much it will be and he tells me and asks if I want a receipt.
Do I? It’s never been offered to me as a choice before and it seems like maybe only weird people want receipts, otherwise why would he even ask? I summon up the courage to say, yes, we probably need one for our records and he goes to the truck to get one. Between the joke and wanting a receipt, I fear I will end up on some sort of electrician’s blacklist.
And just like that, it’s over. I breathe. I put the children in their beds for a nap and wander into the kitchen to make lunch. Before sitting down to eat I look around to make sure no tools were left behind and I won’t be interrupted. There are none. I can relax. Next time, I am making my husband take the day off to deal with this.
