Home, Sweet Home

My mother used to tell me stories about those first unstable days of being young, newly married and pregnant.  There were always descriptions of a terrible hand-me-down plaid couch or relations of just how closet sized those closet-sized barracks were in Iceland.


However, the maintenance man, just hours ago, pulled a dead rat out of our bathroom plumbing.  That's right, I said a rat--in our shower drain, no less.  Now, my mother also once told me she woke up with a cockroach the size of her hand on her face while living in these shipping freight-sized barracks; that may have been true, but I kid you not: A RAT!  Oh, wait, I'm sorry, a "piece of rat," as the very hesitant maintenance man said under his breath as we caught him running out the door.  There is a general consensus among our friends that "a piece of rat" sounds way worse.


So, my fiancee, Matthew, is standing naked with one sock still on trying to decide if it's safe to shower now.  We've both gone nine days--apparently a perfectly reasonable time according to our apartment management--without showering ("bird baths still happened, don't worry).  I'm not sure what to tell him.  I'm still standing in the bathroom door, sponge in hand, contemplating if my last thirty minutes of sterilizing worked.  I scrubbed the precipice with borax.  I dumped bleach down the drain.  I threw away anything surrounding the crime scene.  But I still hovered over the tub to wash my crotch for fear of residual rat juices.


So this is the anecdote I get to tell my darling fourth-month-old daughter one day?  How do I romanticize that?  There's nothing quaint about a dead rat in your plumbing.


I guess the point is, we're trying.  We're all trying.  My parents, both in their early twenties when blessed with lil' old me, tried.  Matthew's mother was relating to me the other day that she and her husband first shacked up in a cousin's garage when they got married.



I am becoming quite comfortable with setbacks.  For everything that goes wrong, the number of things I can count as blessings most certainly outweigh these few ridiculous days.  There are plenty of things I can be proud of.  Matthew and I were both working less than living wage jobs when we met, fell in love, and two months later, found out we were pregnant.  We've come up against a great deal of sighs, gasps, tisk-tisks, and any other skeptical sound you can think of.  We've matured together, we've managed our money with moderate intelligence, and we've even procured the fundamentals needed to make a place look like a home. (Thank you, Ikea.)


Don't get me wrong, I fully intend on taking the apartment management on to right the health hazards wrought upon us poor, meager apartment renters.  It will be a long, exhausting process contending with the management.  I feel a little resigned and sick, but I have eight hours until tomorrow starts. And, this evening, snuggled up to my beautiful baby bird in our comfy bed waiting for my man in one sock, I am grateful for this life, its obstacles, and its rewards.  Ok, but not the vermin.  I'd be ok without the vermin.

Peace.