A recent phone conversation:
Me: All that work you guys have been doing, very slowly? Well, it's caused a serious problem. There is a sewage leak. There's toilet paper and water and god knows what flooding up into the planter bed in the carport.
My landlady: It's Saturday. What do you want me to do about it?
Me: Um, call an emergency plumber?
My landlady: I don't see what that would help. What can they do?
Me: Hmm. I don't know. FIX THE SEWAGE LEAK IN THE CARPORT?
I didn't realize I could actually get so angry. As someone who is kind of angry to begin with, this was a revelation. I was so angry I was almost calm, and the whole time I was thinking, Wow, it's so amazing how angry I am. I can't believe I'm this angry. Gosh. Holy moly. I am so angry.
Yesterday, the day after the angry phone conversation, the landlady and
Mr. I'm-Allergic-to-Bees-and-Have-Injured-My-Knee-So-Badly-I-
Can
Barely-Get-up-the-Driveway
(Which-I-Have-to-
Use-Because-the-Front-Steps-are-Covered-in-Mud)
and-Yet-For-Some-Reason-Will-Be-the-Person-Who-is-Doing-
Most-of-the-Plumbing-Work
checked out the property.
They decided on a meandering, byzantine, cheap (but labor-intensive), and frankly insane solution for completing the work on the original leak. Could take weeks, months. No telling. Sorry!
They also determined it was okay that we had an open sewer line for just one more day, seeing as how we'd covered it with a plywood board and all.
This did not make me one bit less angry. Before the landlady left, I talked to her unsmilingly for a long time while Eric stood behind me with his arms folded. We exacted promises that she would get the sewer guy out on Monday, and work on the front yard would begin promptly the next day.
I make us sound all firm, but I felt so fucking weak. Why was I having
to do all this posturing and perform all these verbal gymnastics to intimidate
this awful woman into fixing what amounts to a Third World condition? How had we even
let her get away with this for so long in the first place?
The sewer guy called us an hour later. He absolutely could not come before Tuesday. He was sorry, but it was on short notice and he had another job.
An hour later I flushed the toilet, and it was sluggish and started to overflow. Eric stopped it just in time, and I went out front to see my business gushing down the driveway: Hello, old friend! I didn't expect to see you again!
I couldn't talk, at least not in anything resembling English, so Eric called our landlady back. He was polite but very, very clear. Clear and angry. She sounded breathless and irritated. She told him to call the sewer guy and see if he couldn't come earlier. Then she said, "Thanks very much!" as fast as she could and hung up on him.
So. Angry.
After Eric convinced the sewer guy to come out a day early, we went for a long bike ride and wondered how long it would take to pack up the house and move again. We went out to a friend's house and then out for dinner until late. We went home and limited our fluid intake.
I peed in the shower this morning, angrily; went to work, angrily; waited for Eric to call with the number of whatever lawyer he'd found. Angrily.
But then a miracle occurred. By the time I got home tonight, the sewer line was fixed, the leaky pipe was replaced, and the moat was already partially filled in.
I'm not sure, and the work's not all done yet, but I think we finally made the landlady understand how angry we were. Except for the part where it makes you feel like shit, anger is magic.