You know how you estimate time for little itty bitty simple chores, not counting on them being more complex and multi-faceted with unforeseen challenges?
Yeah … I know you do. I may have bitched about this before, especially when those little nothing-to-it chores are HOUSEWORK in the domain of devalued women’s (bitch’s) work.
It’s especially frustrating when these tasks are viewed as so little and simple that any dummy should be able to knock them out with effortless speed and efficiency without breaking a sweat or frizzing a hair, all while also participating in a conference call, polishing nails, and preparing and consuming a healthy snack (hint: the most efficient way for the successful woman to eat is to create a video for social media showcasing the simple ingredients list, shopping and preparation, and save time and reduce calories by skipping the steps of eating, savoring and digesting it).
Anyway. It’s summer, so I have that simple (not) dum-dum (not) WATER POTTED PLANTS OUTSIDE tasks on my to-do list. It should be intrinsically rewarding! A breath of fresh air! Not really a chore at all! So full of fucking gratitude for the water and the plants and the going out of doors when other people are stuck in offices standing around water coolers getting paid to gossip and throw back complimentary work-provided coffee and cake every other day for some lazy coworker’s birthday whose name they don’t even know!!!
But it’s my first backyard-watering of the year after winter and a very long and (thankfully) wet spring. So the hose is still disconnected. And the faucet is hidden behind overgrown weeds and extra bushed-out bushes. So I have to trim some of that back.
Then I have to uncoil the hose and straighten it out, in part to prevent me attaching it to the faucet and inadvertently tying it in (a) knot(s) and making it more difficult to unravel once attached. So I get the hose untangled from itself (and in so doing have to tear through and pull up long weedy grass clumps that have grown around the hose; somehow the blades of grass are like long necklace-chain arms that have clasped their hands together, holding on tight to the hose they encircle).
After untangling the hose from itself and the self-weaving grasses, I have to crouch down low to the ground to ATTACH THE HOSE TO THE FAUCET (an extra task I actually recognized as being a real chore of its own and added as a line item to my to-do list, because I am getting better at this: breaking tasks down into subtasks, acknowledging each of them as real work, and giving myself credit for doing each of them, even if I’m still not a pro at setting aside enough time for the inevitable complications) and the hastily pruned branches of the clipped-back brushery scratches the tops of my hands. My squatting muscles are weak and flimsy … I’m shaking and tipping over very quickly as I clink around trying to fit the hose to the faucet when the screwy hose-opening doesn’t even seem bigger-enough than the faucet-screwy.
I can’t remember which way to turn the hose-screwy to attach it to the faucet-screwy. YES I know righty-tighty, lefty-loosey! But is it right from MY vantage point? Or from the faucet’s? I vaguely remember this hose-to-faucet thing being one of those exceptions to the rules, or a *complicating footnote or something to reference in a manual’s appendix (#for certain models of screwy things, see appendix 3b for wall-mounted jars and pipe-shaped lids).
I try a few revolutions this way (counter-clockwise from my perspective) but give up quickly when it the hose gains no purchase on the faucet, then a few revolutions the other way (clockwise, it looks like) which seems to get it threaded so I keep turning hopefully, then do a test-pull and of course I’ve just been clinkily screwing air.
At this point I shift from squatting to kneeling, thereby soiling my pants (the knees and calves, dumbass — I did not shit myself … this time) so I can get a closer look at the couplings with my extremely visually-impaired genetically-inferior eyes. This accomplishes nothing, providing zero clarifying details.
I don’t want to squander all of my squat and screw muscles without knowing and being fully-confident of the correct way to turn the hose onto the faucet, so I decide to switch to attempting to screw and unscrew hoses by the front of the house on a more easily-accessible faucet installed higher by an unobscured corner without pokey shrubbery.
This, too, proves more complicated than I imagined. While I attached this hose only a couple weeks ago, I do not remember which direction I did it, and I do not know if our landlord left the water off or on so now I am also confused about which direction to turn the actual knob to unleash or stop the flow of water. This faucet is newer and shinier and I seem to have connected it very tightly, so now when I fail to unscrew the hose I’m not sure if it’s because I’m going the wrong direction or because it’s just on there really tight. I do not know if I am making it worse/tighter. I do not know if I am making it better/looser, and in so doing if I’m about to get drenched with water. I put my ear close to see if I can hear anything, but on the other side of this wall is the washing machine where I (very efficiently) began a load of laundry right before I tackled this hose task-turned-project so I can’t tell whether the running-water noises are connected to this outside faucet or the inside washer.
I try spinning the blue-snowflake knob to see if water squeezes out or changes the sound of things or makes the hose fatter or skinnier but I can’t make any sense of it and go back and forth and back and forth: right, left, right, left, right, left. Some water gushes out and I can’t get a firm-enough grasp on the shiny screwy metal parts to loosen the hose from the faucet, so I go to get some grippy garden gloves. But along the way I take a detour to google this shit.
Which way do you turn a hose to unscrew it, which direction to you screw on a hose when facing faucet, etc. But all the results are for videos of how to loosen a stuck-on hose or unclear explanations containing information I already had: lefty loosey right tighty, and counter-clockwise to unscrew, clockwise to screw on … but with no information about which way you’re oriented relative to a faucet, rendering these words totally fucking useless. Like … which thing is the lid and which thing is the jar? I think the hose is the lid and the faucet is the jar, but it still isn’t working. I mean … with a jar the only way to orient yourself incorrectly is to fucking turn the jar itself upside down and try to put the lid on the threadless closed-bottom of the fucker. This problem is a lot like trying to tell a new incompatible sex friend which side of the bed is his and which side IS MINE; you take the left side, the right side is mine (but *he* thinks I mean the right side when you're OUTSIDE of the bed, oriented from the foot of the bed instead of from the perspective of being IN the bed, seated against the headboard). Is this like stage left and stage right? I don't know. I am not an actor. I am a bitch trying to get a job done, and everything should be oriented according to MY operational vantage point.
I gave up on the internet answering my question, put the gloves on, used some elbow grease … and finally figured it out.
So the plants did eventually get some water, but I’ll be damned if I can remember now what the answer is; the very next day and I’ve already forgotten which way to screw a hose onto a dumb-ass faucet.
