Dateline, Asheville. Breaking News: Romance Ends When Crapping in Buckets Begins
Kill me. Kill me now.
Remember how last time I was waxing poetic about some key aspects of the life we’ve been so suddenly forced to live here in unimaginably devastated Asheville?
Yeah. Forget all of that. Because now we’re shitting in buckets. And if there’s anything on this planet that can mitigate the sublime charms of, say, listening to your wife read to you Jane Austen by candlelight, it’s doing so while shitting in a bucket.
Not that I do it right there in the living room while she’s reading to me. I wait till she takes a break for a little something to eat. And then it’s an achievement that no one, in the history of personal dreams, has ever had on their bucket list
Am I exaggerating any of this? Well, yes, I am. Have I, in fact, actually used one of my Home Depot buckets for a purpose that God never, ever intended? No.
But my neighbor is. Has. Might be as I’m typing this. LOTS of people in my neighborhood are doing the buckety yuckedy. Some people in our neighborhood are doing a CLASS tomorrow at noon on How to Build a Bucket Toilet.
Should be a brief enough class. “The trick is to be SURE the bucket doesn’t move while you’re using it. That’s pretty much it. Now let’s talk about how to keep away flies after washing your hair with your urine. The secret? A good shower or bathing cap and some really strong rubber bands.”
Anyway. Life is continuing as we get through Day 7 of no water or electricity. It’s getting a little weird out here. People seem to be feeling a tad … werewolfish, I would say. Like, right now I’m listening to a guy whom I believe a few nights back simply OCCUPIED this little shack that’s in the backyard of a house that’s empty now because it’s occupants fled Asheville right about the time, I believe, when people started talking about CRAPPING IN BUCKETS, who is SINGING. Loudly. And not well. He cannot, for the life of him, complete any two lines of any one song before he fizzles out on that tune, and latches on to whatever snippet of the next song pops into his head. It’s like listening to an old jukebox that someone keeps bumping into.
But you know what? Two days of listening this perpetually skipping human record, and I dig it. At least it’s MUSIC. So that’s not nothing. And he just segued from Brown-Eyed Girl straight into Eleanor Rigby. I may never be the same.
Oh, good. At least four homes around here just kicked in with their portable gas generators. The fumes should be hitting me …well, they just did. But it shouldn’t affect I’m sure it wiient blugghwrtent plecht
Okay I should go while I can still barely breathe. Apparently one of my neighbors is having a sale on all the sawdust he’s made from sawing down the trees that fell in his yard. And this is a sale I don’t want to miss, because apparently, when you’re CRAPPING IN A BUCKET, sawdust can spell the difference between you being left with crap in a bucket, and you being left with crap in a bucket covered in sawdust.
I don’t have any cash. So I’m hoping I can trade a half-eaten box of Cheerios for some sawdust. They taste about the same, so hopefully we can work something out
Speaking of cash, if you’ve any mind at all to become a paid subscriber to this newsletter that I can tell I’m going to be obsessing on until I’ve talked about ALL the things this fucking hurricane and its aftermath have left me basically NEEDING to talk about, I wouldn’t stop you. Not to be CRASS about it or anything, but the medical bills for my five-day stay in the hospital (and my visit the night before that to an urgent care center, and so on) have started to come in.
And, I mean…well, you can imagine. So thank you.
I’ve hammered this post out on my cell phone, and have no idea if it’ll even post. I hope so! Thank you for all your love and support. It’s on my bucket list to personally visit each and every one of you. And please trust that when I pull up to your house, I will (assuming we have the kind of relationship that I’m certain we do), I will leave my bucket in my car.
LOVE YOU!
As a Miamian who has been through a number of hurricanes in my lifetime (since the 1950's), when we have had no water pressure to flush the toilet we use a bucket of water to pour into the non-working toilet bowl and the water moves the "waste" down the pipe. We get the water from the filled bathtub (always fill the bathtub with water before a hurricane for this purpose - not for drinking/cooking) or if someone is lucky enough to have a swimming pool, you can get the (clean) water from there, too. And you don't need a full big bucket of water to do the job. Enjoy!