BIG BUCKET FULL

Savage Kitten is an exemplary woman. Most of the time. As my readers by now know, Savage Kitten is my longtime companion and better half. She is a small Cantonese-American female with a sharpish tongue and a lot of patience. She needs that patience because she lives with me.

Sometimes, however, I'm the one that needs the patience.

Especially when she says things in front of the open window that all the neighbors can hear.

Recently the kitchen sink got plugged. Probably because of her casual attitude towards tealeaves and other scrap material of vegetable origin. I am very careful about it, she believes that "if you wish it, it will go".
And everything goes in.
The kitchen sink is in front of the open window. The shared airwell is on the other side of the open window. Everything you say in front of that open window can be heard by everyone else on that airwell.


"Toad, have you been sh*tt*ng in the sink again?!?"


This pursuant the blockage that kept the basin from draining. I clarified that I had done no such thing. Ever.
You know what she meant, I know what she meant. Our neighbors do NOT know what she meant.
As is her wont, she looked studiously innocent after saying something embarrassing in front of the open window. The expression on her face said "who, me? I don't know what you're talking about". Looking like that is a carefully nurtured skill that usually works to my disadvantage, especially in public. She does it very well.

To deal with the drainage problem I proposed that I clear the liquid from the sink, and went to get a bucket from the bathroom.


"That's the bucket we bathe out of! Get a different bucket!"


The shower hasn't worked for years. It's rather pointless getting it fixed, as the equipment is a bit old. We simply dump buckets of water over ourselves.
As far as I'm concerned, our neighbors did not need to know that we bathe out of a bucket.


"No, not that one! That's my cootch bucket!!!"


Gee, hon, you really want everyone to know your c**tch is that big? What must they be thinking now? And what, pray tell, is a cootch bucket?

Turns out a cootch bucket is the bucket in which she washes her scanties. Women are strange that way, they'll wash their undies BEFORE taking them to the Laundromat.

No wonder those things smell so delightfully fresh. Mmmmm!

I didn't know one needed a special vessel for that. A cootch bucket.
The smallest bucket in the house. Delicate, tiny. Holds no more than four or five litres.
No idea what the ratio of cootches to litres is, your guess is as good as mine.

You could just wash 'em in the kitchen sink, hon, I wouldn't notice.

Oh wait. It's plugged. Never mind.

After I emptied the sink she insisted that I thoroughly wash her cootch bucket. When I suggested that that would be much more fun with her sitting in it, she screamed that I was a weird white man, an utter deviant, and an obsessed sicko.
In front of the open window.

I'm certain that several pairs of eyes followed me out of the building this morning.


POSTSCRIPT

In great good spirits she called me at work today to convey that the sink is no longer plugged, she had fixed it.

"In my hands a plunger is like a delicate surgeon's scalpel"

She is, after all, a landlords daughter, and related to engineers. She knows what she's doing. With her around, you don't need a man for your plumbing needs.
I hope the neighbors appreciate that there's no more sh*t in the sink.