Tawanda! One small step for women, but it really felt good

Not a real snake -- at least, not the slithery, tongue-flicking, creepy-crawly shudder-inducing kind of snake. I don't have a problem with our legless friends, as long as they don't have a problem with me. When we lived in our old house, we had a big king snake living under the old frame bulding and after he moved in, we never saw or heard another mouse, rat, camelback cricket or annoying neighborhood chihuahua again.

I'm only guessing about the chihuahua.

No, I got myself and honest-to-gosh plumber's snake because I was tired of having to swim out of the shower every morning. When you're third in line, and second in line is the long haired, perpetually shedding son who likes thirty-minute rinses, cleared drains are essential to family peace and harmony. Usually, a few spoonfuls of drain cleaner and enough bad language to make Deadwood look like a the PTL Club will clear out the drain, the air, and any chance of a getting a Get Out of Purgatory Free card.

This time, however, the magic crystals weren't up to the job. I strongly suspected something more permanent than Prince Charming's flowing tresses had made it down the drain and was creating a more permanent blockage.

Since we never dry clean and someone in our family, I won't name (Cough cough husband cough cough) names, has a Joan Crawford fetish about wire hangers, I didn't have a nice, three-foot long piece of flexible metal to jab down the pipe. The last time I had to rent a snake, it required a credit card -- which I no longer have -- for security purposes, or a great deal of money -- which I also no longer have. (See credit card reference. Figure it out.)

So I headed off to the Big Box store in search of wire coat hangers and found out you could actually buy your own plumber's snake.

For about a 10th of what it was going to cost me to rent.

True, it's not industrial length, but for a little in-house job, and considering our plumbing clogs almost as fast as my arteries after a barbecue festival, it was a worthwhile investment.

Happy birthday to me.

I shouldn't gripe -- last year, my Christmas present was a car battery and my birthday present was a set of tires, or vice versa.

But the real birthday present came later, and also goes waaaaay back. When my father died, my mother was only 43 -- younger than I am now, but she was also clueless. Married at 17, she'd always had Dad around to do things like mow lawns, change oil and snake out drains. (Not kill bugs, though. She was an insect assassin beyond compare.)

When he died, she was faced with hundreds of those little odd jobs that he had done, and often she got overwhelmed and the simplest thing would frazzle her. But she always met the challenge. She would read the instructions, figure it out, screw, hammer, nail, and eventually dial just the right number to summon a son, a son-in-law, or a real repairman.

I've tried to learn from that. Thanks to her, I know how to change tires, program remotes, and refinish furniture. Thanks to my husband, I can also hang drywall, spackle and roof, but that's a whole other column, dedicated to the one I'll put in print when I know he's going to be out of the country for a while. Like a year. Or more.

But I'd never snaked a drain before. I knew I was in trouble when it took me 15 minutes to peel off the tough plastic cocoon around the tip of the snake. Then, another 15 minutes to figure out how to get it into the drain. The drain cover had been cemented in -- only after it had been screwed in. Of course, the gaps between the the bars of the cover were just exactly not wide enough to let the snake in.

I had two choices. I could give up and finish cleaning the house for my little brother's visit and wait for the husband to get home, when he would chuckle, pat me on the head, and said, "Well, honey, you tried."

Or, I could go Tawanda on that (expletive deleted.)

For those of you who haven't seen "Fried Green Tomatoes" -- guys -- Tawanda is the cry the Kathy Bates character uses to channel for her inner warrior. I grabbed a butter knife and perched my crunchy knees on a sopping towel, then plunged my hands into the murky depths of the shower floor.

Tawanda!!

Wiggling the knife back and forth, I nudged and budged and badgered the drain cover until it finally submitted to my mighty powers. The snake was through! The snake worked! The evil spirit of the swampy shower gurgled in defeat as it was sucked away and Tawanda reigned triumphant once again.

Self-empowerment -- now, that's a birthday present!

I learned that I can do anything I set my mind -- and butterknife -- to, and I don't have to have my husband do it for me.

About that time, I could hear the slurping gurgle of another drain in another room, fomenting another revolt. I also heard the front door open and my husband walk in.

No, I don't have to rely on the hubby for home repairs -- but I'm so glad I can.