Failed Feminist Moments (Or Hot Tub Drainage Goes Terribly Awry)

Ok, I just experienced what well intentioned but deeply misguided women like me call a Failed Feminist Moment.

To understand said moment, you have to bear with me on a little life history. I got divorced about three years ago and, in a fit of suddenly single insanity, sold my goreous, perfectly furnished and finished home, and put my winnings down on a pretty l’il fixer upper in the woods. Sure it needed work, but I had cash, and frankly, this house was freaking amazing. Latilla ceilings in some places. Glass ceilings in others. Giant shaved trees for support in the middle of the living room. A spiral staircase. And a pit roughly the size of a football field in the middle of the house that intended to become, but never really got around to becoming, an indoor pool. No problem, I would finish the pool. And refloor the entire place. Slap on a new roof. Replace all the fixtures. Finish the two unfinished bathrooms. NO PROBLEM.

After the guy I hired to fix up the house took fifteen thousand dollars and disappeared, and after I found out that the one thing the sellers never told me was that my well was dry, I had a whole lot less cash left on hand to finish said home. My plans scaled down considerably. After I finished half the work, and the house flooded, and I had to start all over again, they scaled down a little more. Indoor pools were hardly an option.

One of the great questions I had to ask myself is what to do with the failed indoor pool. I tossed around ideas. Giant planter? Fish pond? Giant cat box (which is pretty much what the old owners were using it for)? I finally settled on installing a hot tub in the pit and surrounding it with a water proof decking. I pictured myself, clad in a skin tight bikini, boasting Cindy Crawford’s body and a margarita, mobbed by adoring friends saying, “I can’t believe you have a HOT TUB in your LIVING ROOM!” and toasting me fondly. What I did not picture was the trauma of trying to drain said hot tub after said inebriated friends make their stumbling exits, having left all of their body oils gathering in greasy little clumps around the hot tub jets. So I didn’t ask the hot tub guy about drainage. So yeah, I didn’t get any.

So, how to solve this dilemma? (I am nothing if not resourceful.) I know! I will get me a young, buff boyfriend who will move in and drain the hot tub for me. Ok, that’s not why I got the boyfriend, but that’s one of the things he did while he lived with me. Without ever disclosing his super secret methods, he silently drained and refilled the hot tub on a regular basis, leaving me and my margarita drinking friends with scads of crystal clear hot tub water memories. Ok, but a few months ago, the boyfriend and I called it quits. He is still my friend, but I feel like a jerk calling him every two weeks to say, “Hey, how’s it goin? Wanna drain my hot tub?”

So the hot tub has gone very unloved for a very long time. I ignored its cries for drainage and added scads of germ killing chemicals, but really, it started to feel like every time I stepped in, I was going for a dip in the Dead Sea. It literally burned my skin. Also, it was starting to grow green stuff. It looked like a scene from Shrek. So today, in a fit of feminist frenzy, I decided, “I can drain the hot tub. Anything boys can do, I can do better.” How does a booty short clad girl go about trying to drain a hot tub with no drainage capacity? I tried to remember everything I could about fifth grade science. My Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles. That’s all I got.

So then, I tried to remember what I had seen my boyfriend do when he was draining. It had something to do with a hose. A siphon? I asked my fourteen year old son how to create a siphon. He said, “You just have to make sure the end that isn’t the water is at a lower pressure than the end that is.” Eureeka! I dug up a garden hose, stuck one end of the hose into the water and draped the other through a window. Then I went outside and pulled the hose through said window and lugged it down the side of the hill outside my house. Which incidentally is covered in trees and cactus and scrub oak. So that process in and of itself took me a good fifteen minutes and resulted in several minor traumas to my skin and one possible concussion. But I did it.

Finally, the end of the hose that wasn’t in the water was at the bottom of the hill. Lower pressure, right? I picked up the hose. Nothing happened. I looked inside. Nada. So, ok, I decided I needed to create suction right, to get things started? So, the crazy lady in her booty shorts and a tank top, standing in the middle of a cactus patch at the bottom of a hill, starts sucking on a garden hose with great gusto. Sucking. Sucking. Sucking. Nothing happens. Until something does. Crazy lady gets a mouth full of chemical laced pond water that is probably infested with black plague. Patooee! Patooeee! But then the water stops. So crazy lady starts sucking again. Again, the mouthful of pond water. Again, the water stops. And it occurs to the crazy lady, who has green scum dripping from the corners of her mouth, that it is really good she doesn’t have neighbors because if she did, they might call the cops her. It also occurs to her that this isn’t working. So, she throws the hose on the ground and stomps on it. It doesn’t respond to the stomping. She swears at it. It doesn’t respond to the swearing. She sucks on it again, and it gives her another mouthful of green scum, and she is starting to feel like she is in a Shrek porno now. But in addition to being resourceful, she is also determined. She starts sucking again.

About this time, the crazy lady’s daughter gets home from school and walks over and says, in that scornful voice only a teenager who thinks her mother has finally lost it can boast, “Mom, what THE HELL are you doing?”

“I am trying to drain the hot tub,” crazy lady says, as if this were self explanatory. What else would she be doing standing at the bottom of a cactus covered hill in booty shorts sucking on a garden hose? So the daughter laughs, and the mom cries, and dashes off to the house in a fit of despair. And calls her ex-boyfriend and tells him about her dilemma. This is a moment of great defeat, having to ask for siphoning advice from an ex like this. But he only mocks her a little bit and says something about using the black hose in the garage and hooking it up to the jets and turning them on.

So she finds the freaking black hose and hooks it up to the jets and turns them on, only the jets are lower than the water line, because a lot of evaporation has gone on during the unloved hot tub months, so the jets that aren't hooked up to the hose start spraying bursts of green water all over the living room. And it doesn’t freaking work. Water doesn’t siphon. No drainage happens. None. Green scum is dripping off the couches, but the hot tub is not draining.

I am now in the process of emptying my hot tub with a saucepan, ferrying little panfuls of green, fetid water from the living room to kitchen and dumping them in the sink. It has taken an hour so far. And the hot tub is still mostly full. It is times like this I think I might wanna give up on my scruples and start sleeping around indiscriminately so I can have a host of strapping young men to call upon in just such emergencies.