A Novice's Guide to Dry Trap Syndrome

People might assume by the small tree sprouting out of the gutter directly above my front door that I'm a failure at home maintenance. And they would be right. My husband is an even bigger failure though, because he's taller. But he works 12 hours a day so he has a good excuse for not removing the tree, or, for that matter, the gunk it's growing in.

And, as luck would have it, he also has a good excuse for not being able to smell the methane gas that greeted us at the bathroom door when we returned from our two-week vacation.

"I can't smell anything," my husband shrugged after inhaling a whiff of the lung-searing vapor. "I have a cold."

And, oddly enough, after I recently cleaned out the two freezers in the garage and later discovered that blood from the discarded meat packages and mushy liquefied bananas had begun oozing out of the bottom of our cracked trash can, and I commented to my husband, "We have a really gross problem with the trash," shortly thereafter I found myself alone in the dark that night fishing out thawed roasts dated 1999 and searching for the garden hose with the flash light.

"I had to make a phone call," my husband said, conveniently appearing in the front yard just as I finished dragging the re-bagged garbage in freshly scrubbed trash cans to the curb.

Which brings me to my question -- I thought guys were supposed to do all the gross stuff in a marriage. It's written towards the top of the Official List of Top Ten Reasons Why Women Really Get Married At All. I don't mean to complain, but just last summer alone I single-handedly trapped an entire family of mice, squished approximately 20 spiders, shot down three wasps with chemical weapons, and scooped up approximately 150 piles of doggy doo doo.

As you can see, I have more than fulfilled my quota of gross duty for the year, and am therefore withdrawing my name as a candidate for solving the methane gas problem that has developed in downstairs bathtub drain, as I do not feel I am qualified. I am a woman, and I have no training for methane gas, except for babies with gas pains and that sort of thing. But methane gas outside of the body is not my field.