The Feral Housewife is back in the great white north – North Dakota, that is.
During a late-night Amazon browse session, I recently discovered that there are far too many power drill attachments to purchase for cleaning your home. However, this Feral Housewife feels like the frustrations of life can be scrubbed away, preferably with power drill attachments.
So of course, I ordered a dryer-vent power drill attachment tool, and it arrived Monday – Yahoo!!!! Time to clean out the dryer vent! Sloan and Trevor decided to put it to the test before I could experience the joy myself, and somehow they lost the brush inside the dryer hose. While the funny farm is trying to concoct a solution to this problem, I decided that I could probably take the dryer hose off the dryer and just grab the brush – so I disconnected one end of the hose.
When attempting to reach in for the brush, a rogue wire inside the dryer hose snagged my arm, and that is when life turned into absolute chaos in just a matter of moments. I quickly realized that I have about four inches of wire jabbed into my forearm, and the wire is threatening to poke out the other side of my arm. In this “oh s**t” moment, I also realized that I am suddenly alone, stuck to the dryer vent by a wire, and I can’t get myself loose.
I call for Trevor – nothing but silence. I continue to maintain a shocking level of calm and yell loud enough for him to come into the laundry room, and when he gets there, I very calmly state, “I think I need help. I am stuck.” His typical Viking response to this was, “let's try brute force to see if we can rip you free.” These are the moments when I genuinely question the institution of marriage. He soon learned that, as in many of life’s delicate moments, brute strength is not always the answer.
As we are trying to MacGyver my arm free, my phone starts ringing and won’t stop. It is universally known in the “woman world” that if you are receiving a repeat call, this must be an emergency or an SOS from a major friend. Like any good friend, and while still stuck to the dryer vent, I answer the phone. The girl who lives down the street is calling because her niece, almost one-year-old, is choking on a grape. Screw MacGyver, we are back to brute force and the arm is free.
Trevor, at the sight of how much wire was in my arm a moment ago and how much blood is now pouring from my arm, runs before he throws up on me. I do appreciate that he ran away before puking on his wife. Meanwhile, I open the back door and do a “Usain Bolt” sprint down the street, kicking out of my shoes when they slow me down, running so fast the other neighbors realize there must be an emergency somewhere and stand outside waiting to see what to do next. With a racing heart and dread filling my mind about the absolute worst-case scenario, I ran to her house like I had a felony warrant to serve.
Like the Kool-aid Man, I kick in the door to find the one-year-old still passing air, although not as much as she obviously needed. Her dad threw her in the car and hauled her to the ER where they were able to dislodge the remaining grape. In the meantime I'm standing in the house's entryway, barefoot, blood running down my arm, trying to mentally process the events of the last ten minutes and failing miserably. Walking home, every neighbor in the area was standing outside waiting to see what the heck just transpired that caused the Queen of this trailer park to engage in such unladylike behavior.
At home, my husband had no idea what was going on or where I had gone. Another neighbor had run to our house to fill him in about my great sprint, telling him that I ran off. However, he assumed it was to go to the Stouts’ house to hold their baby so mom could finish painting. He was baffled to see me coming from the opposite direction, barefoot and out of breath, looking like I'd just be hit by a semi.
The rest of the evening was a quiet one, with me thinking over and over again why in God’s name would anyone call me in an emergency situation. I was just stuck inside a dryer vent – clearly, I am not responsible enough for genuine emergency calls. If you ever find yourself in an emergency, call 9-1-1, or an adult who is succeeding at adulting, not the 34-year-old woman trapped in a dryer vent because of a power drill attachment she couldn’t pass up.
If you need me, I will likely be passed out on the bathroom floor from bleach fumes with my power drill scrubber attachments, trying to scrub away the sins of a toddler who can’t aim for the life of himself.
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