Engineer, Nay, Pain in the Rear

You’ve seen the memes circulating the interwebs since the start of this pandemic. “Check on your extravert friends, we are not ok.” Or, “Check on your friends with strong-willed children, we are not ok.” Or, my personal favorite, “Check on your friends who work in professions which require them to refrain from saying 90% of what they are thinking, we are not ok.” In all this memeing, there is a forgotten group. For us, I’d like to offer this, “Check on your friends who are married to engineers, we are not ok.”

Those of us, the brave, the tired, the prematurely gray, who have spent hunks of our lives married to engineers have an unspoken bond. When one engineer spouse meets another, we immediately share a knowing nod that says, “I feel ya.”  There is no need to explain the madness, the half-finished projects, the overblown plans or the lack of common sense, because we battle it everyday. Are our spouses intellegent? Of course. It takes a serious nerd with a freakish understanding of physics to go into engineering. It also takes a brain that functions unlike the rest of humanity. 

Now, with the world on lock-down, all of those engineers are working at home. They have invaded our domains of sanity. Not only are our engineers home, they are bringing dozens of additional engineers with them via conference calls and Zooms. Last week I was privy to a conference call while changing laundry outside The Turk’s hidey-hole. In addition to my husband’s thick Turkish accent, there were two Indian accents, a French accent, a New England accent, one thick southern drawl and another that was unclear if it was an accent or annunciation issue. 

“I can’t understand half of these people so how do you?” I asked the Turk.

“I don’t.” He replied.

As each engineer on the call went off on what seemed to an unrelated tangent, it was clear the Turk was not alone. I fled before I got disorganization angina. (Yes it’s a real thing. I get it whenever I go into our garage.)

Then there are the plans. When my engineer is busy with work, he doesn’t have the brain space leftover to devise masterplans that he is fully capable of designing but is probably only partially capable of executing. (And even if he is capable, he loses interest half-way through – thus the hole in my bathroom ceiling at present.) The past month has gone something like this:

Laying in bed, “I have idea. This summer I am going to knock the wall, build new steps and turn attic into huge closet so we have more room for clothes.”  – or you could just rotate summer and winter clothes like me.

Sitting by the fire pit, “I have idea. This summer I can dig up yard and put in irrigation system. Then grass can grow.” – or we could just pay a landscaper to put down sod every year for 20 years and it would be cheaper than your idea.

On the deck, “I have idea. This summer I can rent machine, what is it…excavator? I can build jogging track all around woods. I can bring truck with gravel and we can walk there every day.” –or we can just keep walking in the cemetery across the street and never allow you into an excavator.

Eating lunch, “I have idea. This summer I am going to build new guest room in garage apartment.” – gotta catch that raccoon first.

Drinking coffee, “Last night I have idea. This summer I am putting new section on tree house that connect to other two trees. Then I can drink my beer there.” – or you could just finally put the steps on so the kids can get in it after waiting a year.

Readers, it’s rough. Every day he has a new plan and I can literally feel money slipping through my fingers with every word he utters.  And if that were not enough, there are the very engineerish things that might just kill me.

Like last week.

9:00 am “Honey, there is a wicked storm blowing through later with 65 mph winds. You should go get gas for the generator.”

“I can go later.”

12:00 pm “Are you going to get the gas now before the storm?”

“I can go in an hour.”

3:00 pm “Did you get that gas yet?”

“I can’t go now. It is raining. We be ok. I have plenty gas in shed  and tank of propane too.”

5:30 pm – Power gone – “You need to go hook up the generator.”

5:55 pm- leaning out the window in the pouring rain, still with no power.  “What the hell are you doing? Turn it on!”

“I can’t. There is mouse inside. I am waiting for him to leave.” (Insert heavy  profanity on my end)

6:15 pm – Generator is finally on and a drenched Turk enters. “I have to go get gas for generator. Propane and gas are gone.”

The Moment I’d Been Waiting For…“I know dear, you used the gas in the snow blower and the propane on the grill when you got drunk last fall and wanted to grill a frozen pizza.”

“Oh.”

Long story short, when he tried to get gas, the power was out in the gas stations too. Fortunately we had enough gas to get us through bedtime but when the power was still out the next morning, the Turk was forced to go out gathering gas so I could make the coffee that would keep me from strangling him. 

Brilliance comes with a price and this is the price. I get that, but please, check on your friends who live with engineers, we are so not ok. 

Raccoon Stew…Ewwww

So, your news feeds are nothing but doom. Your Fitbit no longer bothers to remind you to move after having it’s nudges ignored too often. Your mirror keeps reflecting back a head full of multi-colored roots. (Personally I’ve decided to embrace the gray, or what I like to call Jesus’s highlights.) You don’t remember how pants with buttons work anymore and your days flow seamlessly from coffee to wine. Add in some e-learning and managing video conferencing for 2 working parents and 2 kids and you need a good laugh. Dear readers, I am here for you.

I’m sure that after last week’s blog chronicling the pending Turk/raccoon cage match, you’re dying to know how things are panning out right? In case you missed it, last week I explained that we have a squatter living in the apartment above our garage. He’s suspected to have been in residence there for several months and has not bothered to make recompense for his time with us.  While I intended to, in a very American fashion, assassinate the adversary, my Turkish husband determined it best to relocate the furry little bastard instead. Since I’m not a fan of blood splatter, even on television, he won and last week a massive kill-free trap arrived on my doorstep thanks to FedEx.

It took a bit for the Turk and our offspring to get the gist of the trap but thankfully, they figured it out without using our surly cat as a model. The Turk had found a recipe for a special soup on YouTube that was guaranteed to lure the rodent into the cage but when I pointed him to the kitchen to conquer the task on his own, he and the boys determined it best to make a test run with peanut butter and beer and tackle the soup if the peanut butter failed.

So far, the Turk’s trap has remained bare.

Fast forward a few days.

I was preparing yet another of the 5 million meals I’ve been forced to make during this quarantine crap, when my darling husband burst into the kitchen with tears of laughter streaming down his face. He’d been on his weekly phone call with his mother in Turkey. As a typical Turkish mama’s boy he spends a good forty-five minutes or so every weekend exchanging the happenings on both sides of the Atlantic and of course, his battle against Rafet Raccoon, (I felt it easier to wage war with an enemy possessing a human name.) was a hot topic.  He explained to his mother that raccoons are real, not just cartoons like in Turkey, and that they run free in the US. He then explained that one had gotten into our garage and that he was trying to capture it by having me make a magical raccoon soup. That’s where it went south.

There were shrieks.  There were screams of disbelief. There were repeated exclamations of, “Why? Why? Why? What have they done to you in that awful country?” (PS – he first set foot in America like 20 years ago. Chill lady.) Hunting isn’t a thing in Turkey unless it’s for protection from something like wild boars. (True story. That’s the only time the Turk ever went hunting in his life.) His mother spent a good ten minutes lamenting the way her baby boy had morphed into an ugly American before he realized she’d totally misunderstood the story.

Somehow she’d gotten confused with his tale and my mother-in-law thought I’d sent my husband hunting for the raccoon so that I could then butcher the damn beast and make my family a nice raccoon soup.  And that’s when the tears of laughter began to flow and my darling husband had to dig deep to determine if he should correct her misunderstanding or just keep laughing and let her roll on to madness.

The misconception that I was some kind of bayou gal sending my husband out to gather roadkill for a nice family feast is not surprising. My in-laws referred to me as “the American” for years and while we did fine when I lived in Turkey, my mother-in-law has long been a wonderful critic of all things American, especially me.

So while we’ve yet to trap the little bandit in the garage, he’s still providing some serious entertainment and my husband, even during today’s phone call, is still using this as a nice opportunity to torment his mother. And just in case she decided to use Google to translate this post, as she sometimes does, here’s a little something to keep the fun alive.

 

RACCOON STEW 

(from cooks.com)

1 raccoon, cut into cubes
2 or 3 onions, sliced
2 to 3 c. canned tomatoes, chopped
Salt & pepper
Bay leaf
Dash of Worcestershire sauce
4 Carrots
1 Onion
3 Potatoes
2 Turnips

Brown the raccoon slowly in a Dutch oven. There should be enough fat within the tissues that no additional oil is required. Add onions during the last of the browning process so they won’t become scorched. Reduce the heat, add enough tomatoes and liquid to cover the meat, season and cover. Simmer over low heat until almost completely tender. Add cubed vegetables of your choice and continue to simmer until vegetables are tender. Serve hot with biscuits.

 

An Eviction in My Lair

Life here in isolation is getting hectic now that we’re rolling on work and school for everybody. The Turk is still hiding in the basement, the kids have called dibs on the kitchen and I’m left squatting in whatever corner I can find. This drove me to the brilliant idea of using this quarantine time to finally finish my office in the apartment over the garage. I would create my own lair perfect for hiding from my family, planning  world domination and maybe even working on occasion.

Our house came with a detached garage that houses a half-finished, three-room, two-floor apartment. When we landed here, I staked my claim on the sunny, 2^nd-floor bedroom with windows that overlook the cranberry bogs. I hung up my Wonder Woman memorabilia, unloaded my cases of books and planned to write my bestseller. But before I could achieve greatness, my new lair needed paint (Because the half-finished neon-blue it current holds makes my eyes cross.) and something to cover the sub-flooring and a door. Crazy as it was, I felt like a barrier between the apartment and the open garage might be important. (This request has provided a plethora of ‘I told you Turk’ moments recently.)

“Is easy. I can do. No big job.” My darling husband, the Turk, proclaimed…2 years ago.

So after waiting more than 700 days for the Turk to step up, I gave up. I decided that in this time of excessive home-ness, I could pull a solid HGTV move with the assistance of a 12 and 6 year-old. We’d bust out a little work then, bam – Mama’s got a cushy new hidey-hole.

Step one: planning.  Measuring was math so I deemed our homeschool math lesson that day would be to survey the area and create a totally-not-to-scale drawing showing our plans. We set off, but then my husband issued his ominous warning,

“Be careful. I think somebody living there.”

“Hubba wa?”

“Yes I hear him. He has family. Lots of feet running above last time I am there putting away Christmas decorations. Be careful, I can put trap there.”

My husband has a long history of waging war on rodents. In the 14 years of our union I have witnessed the man I love Rambo out on mice, groundhogs, chipmunks and a few squirrels. He calls on his time as a Turkish commando to dominate small, furry beings and it gets ugly, fast.

Our sons have witnessed Baba’s insanity too,  and by the time we found an apartment floor carpeted with sticky traps, no one was surprised. Nugget simply facepalmed and muttered, “Babba ith nutth.”

We spent a good twenty minutes in there mapping our plan without a single sign of the squatters the Turk warned of…but then I saw a footprint. On a blue box there was a huge, perfectly identifiable raccoon footprint. (I was a Brownie for 2 years, ’79 and ’80, so I know my tracks.) That crazy Turk was right!

Immediately we fled down the stairs to the first floor. Unfortunately, that is our storage room and I promised to dig out the Easter baskets.

“We’ll find the damn plastic eggs then we are out of here before that crazy raccoon decides to attack.” Two sets of little boy eyes widened at me like a crazy woman. “Relax. Maybe it was an old footprint. We were up there for 20 minutes and we didn’t see or hear anything.” It was that “hear anything” that did me wrong. I’d barely gotten the sentence out when something began running around upstairs and whatever it was, it was angry.

Now all of our eyes widened. We froze. Was he coming to throw down? Would I win in a raccoon fight? 20 years ago maybe but I’m old now. Would my children leave me to die if I couldn’t win? (Yes. They might be mama’s boys but they are still male.)  But immediately Nugget showed he’s the guy you need in a raccoon fight. He grabbed a plastic bucket, starting beating it with a shoe and shouting, “I am a weally big guy! Thith ith a weally big guy yelling!” He kept at it again and again and suddenly, the beast above stopped. Nugget had saved us.

We fled back to the house and I immediately alerted the Turk. “Something is up there and it is huge!”

“Yes. I tell you that.”

“How long have you known?”

“Since before Christmas.”

“That’s 4 months ago!”

“Yes.”

“Well he needs to go. As soon as this pandemic crap is over, I’m calling the guy.”

“What guy?”

“You know, the guy that takes care of wild beasts hiding in your home.”

“I think that guy is only on TV.  But I can take care.”

“How? You are not sending the cat in there.”

“No I get trap.”

“You’re going to trap the raccoon and then let him go?”

“Yes. He just need relocation.”

“No. He needs to die.”

“That’s why I take care. You are mean. I can just evict him.”

Today Fed Ex delivered a  trap. The Turk has a plan. He’s going to make soup for the raccoon and put it in the trap. He saw it on YouTube. He thinks it might help to leave a beer too because he saw a raccoon drinking a beer once on Facebook. Needless to say, my dreams of an evil lair are dashed but this battle of Turk versus raccoon should provide a lot of entertainment during the rest of the quarantine. Stay tuned!