Sunday I sat on the floor just inside the front door, my finger holding a leaking radiator closed.

"I feel like the little Dutch kid," I said over my shoulder to Angus, who was frantically getting bits and pieces together to stop our hallway from a flood of Biblical proportions (OK, it wouldn't be Biblical. It'd actually been leaking for days and we'd stuck an old Gerber baby bottle under the leak, but the leak was getting worse so repairs were needed.)

"Why's that?" he asked.

"You know, my finger in the dyke and all that," I answered.

He came into the hallway. "Yeah, but your people aren't big on plugging dams. Don't your people sit on their big front porches with a giant shot gun and shout 'Get off my land!' to people?"

"We might be breaking up soon," was my response to his petty regionalism.

The building work is ongoing. We did fix the radiator, because our assumption that "we'll just throw the radiators away sometime soon" wasn't coming soon enough. The Gerber bottle - no longer fit for purpose - hovers under the radiator like some kind of talisman to ward off future leaks.

Our house looks like a tornado hit it. Seriously. The entire front garden is covered with rubble, which a giant claw-bearing truck comes and picks up periodically.

Those are two of the builders on the right-hand side of the pic (Pants? You there? How soon can you come over and help translate?) Our entire front yard is basically buried under various bits and pieces. The grass will die, but there's nothing we can do about it.

The garage virtually exploded last week, and a new roof and new doors are going on it.

To the right you can see all the grey blocks that make up the new exterior wall of our extension.

Nothing quite prepares you though for the back of the house.

It's a disaster area.

Or the fact that the wall making up our living room is coming down.

I asked The Cowboy when we'd need to take the satellite dish down.

"We can take it down for you, and put it back up when the work is all done," was his reply.

"All done as in 14 weeks from now?" I ask.

"Yeah, that's right."

I take a deep breath. "OK, that's not happening. I need the dish back up right away."

"Why's that?" he asked with puzzled brow.

"Two words, Cowboy: 'I'm American'. TV is a part of my soul, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. If I lose TV people lose their limbs, got it?"

"Got it."

The builders and I have been getting on better, actually. We've learned their patterns - when they need to pee they do it somewhere in the garden (I don't want to know where). If they need to do more, they come inside and use our downstairs toilet. I don't know what the hell they're eating, but we've learned that they'll be in there a while, they always need a double flush, and that it's best to leave the window in there permanently open during the day.

Red Bull is unfailingly polite to me and I'm ok with that. I am the dispensary actually, usually dispensing paracetamol (Tylenol). I handed some out to him yesterday as he had a toothache due to, as he put it, "he got a bit of a smack in the face" Friday night. He showed me where two teeth had been broken off, so I reckon his interpretation of a smack and my interpretation of a smack don't align. I overheard him on the phone giving out full details of his Friday escapades - he went to a bar with a girl and wound up trying to get off with not one but two different girls while there. He started a bar brawl, got thrown out of the place, and went home with one of the girls he was trying to pick up. The girl he originally went to the bar with is pissed off with him for hitting on two girls and shagging one of them.

Sounds so unreasonable of her.

The Cowboy and I have started talking too. We talk about construction issues and things that need doing. I can't say I'm comfortable with the talks, since I am no visionary when it comes to either building or, you know, style, but I try. The one line we've drawn is electrics - he tried to talk to me about them and we had to make our relationship clear.

"And about the circuits, we need to install a-" he started.

"See," I interrupted. "I don't do electrics. Angus does electrics. Angus lives for electrics. I just blew a circuit when you started talking about circuits. Not my bag, man."

At this he laughs.

What was it that blew open the iron curtain? Was it my striving to knock down the walls of gender stereotype? Was it my desire to have women treated as equals? Was it my fight to ensure that I was taken seriously as a woman and an engineer?

No.

It was when The Cowboy was telling me a measurement. He told me that something needed to be moved 6 inches. He then got out his tape measure and the measurement actually turned out to be 2 inches.

I was only on my first cup of coffee that morning, and the mouth-brain connection was still engaged.

"God, trust a man to estimate a measurement bigger than it really is," I muttered. Then I realized what I said. I froze. The men all froze. They looked at me.

Every last one of them fell about laughing.

It wasn't my desire to be considered an equal that melted the frozen relationship.

It was a penis joke.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:50 AM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
Post contains 987 words, total size 6 kb.

1 ROFL! Yeah... it always works to break the water... Glad to hear things are more comfortable, though.

Posted by: Hannah at April 16, 2008 08:12 AM (hjBAP)

2 May I apologise on behalf of the UK for the numb nuts that seem to be doing the work on your house! Any minute now you will be exposed to their hairy builders bottoms poking out the top of their jeans....nice.

Posted by: B at April 16, 2008 09:37 AM (j4kp7)

3 Thank you for the laugh, I needed that. Now you are probably considered one of the guys. Good luck with that!

Posted by: Vicki at April 16, 2008 11:09 AM (jpAyr)

4 And it is very funny - and monumentally TRUE!! I bet they all love you now.

Posted by: kenju at April 16, 2008 12:00 PM (yvCMb)

5 The Dude always refers to Americans as "your people" too. It doesn't help that as Clinton and Obama are campaigning in Pennsylvania that news outlets refer to my fine home state as "blue-collar" and "gun-toting farmers". Ouch. Lies, all lies! We are a cosmopolitan people! Red Bull sounds like the kind of guy that wanders around the streets near me, drunk and loud on a Saturday night at 2am. I wouldn't be surprised if he is local, as this city is inhabited by tens of thousands of Red Bulls.

Posted by: MsPrufrock at April 16, 2008 12:06 PM (6Mr1k)

6 *lol* Personally, I'm astonished that you're seeing them every day. That's a very good sign. And despite how the pictures look, they seem to be making tremendous progress.

Posted by: ~Easy at April 16, 2008 12:37 PM (IVGWz)

7 Snort- just goes to prove that all their oxygen goes to their organ jutting from their pants. Just 14 weeks... I'm excited to see the results! Hopefully rains won't delay the process. How are the babies handling the change and the noise?

Posted by: Andria at April 16, 2008 12:56 PM (Oo4k1)

8 I retold my this story to my husband. And of course, he laughed. "I like that story" he says. Well done babe, well done.

Posted by: Teresa at April 16, 2008 12:58 PM (FmR67)

9 HA! You connected with them on their favorite subject. No wonder they're opening up

Posted by: geeky at April 16, 2008 01:18 PM (ziVl9)

10 Just the laugh I needed this morning. Thanks, Helen!

Posted by: Patsy at April 16, 2008 01:22 PM (ocOr3)

11 I cannot believe that you are so calm with all of that going on around you.

Posted by: Jen at April 16, 2008 01:55 PM (FYm8s)

12 Nice! I love it. I laid the best one down while I was pregnant. A co-worker asked me how big the baby was, I said about 4.5 inches, looked down at his zipper, shurgged, you know..... he turned so red - it was great!

Posted by: Christina at April 16, 2008 02:22 PM (J6Yo6)

13 Screw buying the world a Coke - seems apparent that the world is in despereate need of the right penis joke.

Posted by: amishpromqueen at April 16, 2008 02:35 PM (OUTBp)

14 LMAO, babe. I needed that in the WORST way.

Posted by: caltechgirl at April 16, 2008 03:16 PM (IfXtw)

15 Hello, little Ginger Man on the far right. Hey, if I translate, does that qualify me for a work visa? Or citizenship? Or at least shagging rights? (For him and you? What? Like we won't be getting drunk and regressing to college. Pshaw. How do you think Amy and I fund our bar trips?!) Penis jokes. The great equaliser. ...six inches. Heh.

Posted by: Ms. Pants at April 16, 2008 03:47 PM (+p4Zf)

16 I love that--television, it's in our souls. 14 weeks of construction...that's a lot of penis jokes...

Posted by: Mel at April 16, 2008 04:02 PM (veSRV)

17 Hsh! Running joke in our house? "That's not nine inches, honey. Someone LIED TO YOU."

Posted by: Margi at April 16, 2008 04:23 PM (zfeQt)

18 But it's TRUE!!!!

Posted by: sue at April 17, 2008 03:27 PM (WbfZD)

19 oh...that's the best!

Posted by: Melissa at April 21, 2008 11:06 PM (+Wg/4)

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