Handling the House Without the Man of the House

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I have been separated/divorced for over two years. I bought a small home just outside the neighborhood of the “marital residence”. In my previous life as a stay-at-home, married mom, I never had to worry about taking care of house issues – that was the “man’s job”, but now, I am the head of my household and that thought sometimes makes my knees buckle. Let me give you some background – I purchased a home that is over 20 years old and needed a great deal of work.

Initially, I was proud of my ability to hire contractors and get the work done without the negotiating skills of my attorney ex-husband. I was very proud. Then, as time went on, the money started to dwindle and I found that I had to choose what I could fix and what had to wait. Right now, I have a toilet in my master bathroom that my kids refer to as the “crying potty”. When flushed, this device emits an ear piercing squeal that calls dogs for miles away to my home. In fact, every toilet in my home has an issue – one squeals, one runs incessantly, and one leaks rust (cannot figure that one out). Now this is probably now bordering on TMI, but I will get to my point, I promise.

House maintenance issues aside, I have another issue which has caused me to rise to the occasion more quickly than I would have wanted. I have a cat that I adopted at Pet Smart. Now, we initially went for one cat, but the kind, gray-haired animal lover convinced me to take two for the price of one. Of course, with my kids in tow, and my divorce guilt weighing heavy on my mind, I reluctantly agreed. I could hardly afford to support my children and now I have two kittens, Fritz and Motown (no, I did not name them). Unfortunately, the first of my challenges, aside from my toilets, came on Mother’s day of last year. I had just finished showering and I was getting ready to take my children to Great Wolf Lodge. I looked outside my bedroom window and noticed something in the street – poor Motown had been hit by a car.I ran downstairs and quickly found my children happily playing Wii, oblivious to the tragedy outside. I ran at full speed and closed the blinds. I told them it was so they could see the Wii better (nice white lie, I know). I ran with my robe agape out to the road and stood there terrified and frozen. There was NO way I could handle this – which is what the insecure voices inside my head kept telling me.

As time went on, my remaining cat became an outdoor cat and I would leave the garage door cracked for him. He would enter my garage and then enter my home through a doggy-door that the previous owner’s so thoughtfully left intact. Now, I have had that cat bring in a squirrels, birds and lizards. However, the one of the worst things I had to deal with was the day he ran by me in the kitchen with something in his mouth. He headed straight to my daughter’s room where she was on her bed watching television. I quickly pursued him up the stairs to find that he was slaying a baby rabbit in my daughter’s room. She was screaming. I was screaming. We both fled the room and slammed the door, waiting for the carnage to pass. I was terrified to open the door when we finally did not hear any more struggling. Two days later, the sweet, darling cat brought a snake into my home. I am absolutely terrified of snakes and spiders. He ran past me again with it dangling from his mouth (I promise, I do feed this animal). I yelled for my daughter to bring me some sort of cleaning chemicals from the laundry room and something useful in order to kill this snake. My adrenaline is pumping at maximum capacity as I watch this thing slither into my dining room. My daughter, my lovely daughter, brought to me (and this is not a joke), a jug of FeBreeze and a swimming noodle.

I have learned that even when faced with squealing potties, snakes, lizards, squirrels, and murdered rabbits in your home, you DO have the strength to deal with this on your own, without a man. I never thought I could handle these challenges, but I did. Now, I handled them with a great amount of fear and squealing on my own, but I was very proud that I did it. So how did I do it? Well, for the rabbit, I mustered my courage to open the door armed with a broom, dust pan, yellow cleaning gloves and a bucket of bleach in water (I needed all of that). For the snake, I calmly (okay, I’m lying) asked my daughter for some more appropriate chemical for me to stun my prey before I had to close my eyes and bludgeon it to death. For spiders, I prefer dropping my heaviest nursing text books on them and promptly running away only to pick the book up the next day and pray that it is dead. For my poor kitten, well, I’m not Wonder Woman, I called a friend. I learned that there are many things I can handle as a single parent and for those things I cannot handle with heavy books, FeBreeze, swimming noodles, bleach and latex gloves, it’s always good to know who your friends are (and have them on speed-dial). My children learned that although I am not a man and I am not daddy, I can handle things that are thrown my way – even if I scream while doing it. I think, especially for girls, this is a great gift to pass on to your daughters. You need to keep strong and know that we are capable of taking care of things that were previously delegated to men. For all things that cannot be handled by you, FeBreeze, a swimming noodle, or a pair of latex gloves there is your network of friends, which is priceless!

PS…. I just killed two very spiders in my home tonight. One with pledge and my shoe and the other one with my Anatomy and Physiology book which I dropped on it. I will pick up the anatomy book tomorrow and keep you posted!

Also, I have not fixed the “crying potty”, my kids find it funny and we laugh and mimick it every morning – isn’t that what it is all about? It’s my son’s favorite potty! It’s all about memories even though we don’t think they will be good ones for them, they already are.  I guess I’m doing okay.

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