My best friend is building a house just down the road from me, even further into the sticks than I’m located. Why am I telling you this, you may wonder? Well, because to build a new house one needs to find and hire trades people who are willing to travel out to the middle of butt-fark nowhere to build said house.

Trades people would include plumbers.

I could hear angels singing once again. The wheels in my brain started turning (much like the wheel in my daughter’s hamster cage) and before long I had a plan.

Donning my infamous purple shirt, I figured there was no way a plumber could ignore my chi chi’s tale of woe. I was armed with charm, a pushup bra winning smile and a checkbook. What more could I need to fix my crapper?

Thankfully my best friend took pity on me. One look at my tub of shit was all it took to convince her to join me in my plans to kidnap her plumber.

I don’t know if it was the purple shirt, my loud and proud girls or the fact I promised he could charge me what ever he wanted but soon enough I had managed to commandeer my best friend’s plumber. He took one look at my boobs bath tub and went to work on my septic system.

Fric and Frac were amazed with his plumbing proficiency. Within an hour I had a drained pipe, a working toilet and a poop-free tub. In the eyes of my ten and eleven year old kids, he suddenly shot from being a mere mortal to a superstar, on par with the likes of Justin Timberlake and Spiderman.

They hung on his every word and laughed at every crappy (heh heh) joke he told. It was puppy love at it’s finest. At one point it was so bad I shooed them out of the bathroom just to get them from underfoot. Yet they were firmly enthralled and refused to stray far, instead choosing to sit on the floor outside the washroom door and make googly eyes at their new hero.

Slightly unnerved and not used to being idolized for his shit removal prowess, my new plumber friend turned to me to make small talk as he wrote up a bill for an amount equivalent to Frac’s future tuition costs.

(Sorry Frac. But I had to make a choice…the ability to shit in my toilet freely or your future as Beer Bong King of the Alpha Omega fraternity. It was an easy choice.)

“So do you work?” he asked while trying to avoid eye contact with my enamored children.

“No. I discovered a magical spell that does all the cooking, cleaning, accounting, driving and child rearing a parent could want, rendering me free to spend my time lounging on my couch, popping bonbons and watching soaps all day.” Dumbass. I’d like to see a mom who doesn’t work, cuz those are some skills I need to learn.

“Um, I meant, do you have a job outside of motherhood?” he asked while looking at me like I grew a third tit that liked flap around wildly on my chest.

“Oh. Ya. Well, I like to think I’m an internet porn star, but really I’m a blogger. I write online.”

“So you’re a writer. That’s cool,” he said as he handed me the bill that ensured my son’s future as a Wal-Mart greeter.

We talked for a few more minutes as he gathered up his tools and then as quick as my tub filled with crap, he was gone, back to ensure my best friend’s new house doesn’t have the same problem mine did.

As I turned to get the bleach and the commercial grade rubber gloves to clean out the filthy mess my tub left for me, I noticed Fric glaring at me.

“What?” I questioned.

“Why did you tell him that?” she huffed.

“Tell him what?” I asked while wondering what bug crawled up her pre-pubescent ass.

“That you have a job. That you are a writer. You’re just a mom,” she informed me in a snotty tone.

Unfreakingbelievable. I went through almost ten months of hell to gestate this ingrate, endured eight hours of torture to squeeze her out and subsequently suffered eleven years of parenting so that she could stand before me and tell me I’m just. a. mom.

“Well, I realize I’m just a mom,” I say as I use the finger quotations, “but I’m also a writer. What do you think I do on my blog? Post pictures of my boobs?” I asked as I eyed the disgusting mess in my tub.

“That’s not real writing, Mom.” She spoke to me as though I was a dimwitted moron. Kinda like her dad does when he tries to explain to me what he does for a living. Hmmm.

“Well, it’s not exactly fake, darlin’.” I don’t know whether to be amused or annoyed at this point.

“A real writer writes books. Like Harry Potter,” she explained.

“I’m working on it. I’m planning on writing an award-winning novel about a little girl who steps in it so deeply she is forced to clean the remains of sewage out of her mother’s bathtub. She is permanently scarred with this wild injustice she grows up to be come a rich, over-educated super hero who saves the world from it’s garbage and sewer problems. It is going to be a critic’s delight. Movie producers will be knocking at my door, clamoring for the rights to turn it into this century’s smash box office hit.”

“Very funny, mom.”

“Ya, almost as funny as you cleaning out my tub. Now get ‘er done.”

“You’re so mean.”

“Mean and wily. Now I’ve got to get to work on some real writing. I’ve got me a book to write.”

“You’re not going to tell anyone I had to clean up poo, are you?” she begged.

“Who would I tell?” I countered.

It’s not like I’m a real writer or anything.

He he.

Payback’s a bitch. Wait till she sees the picture I snapped as she was scrubbing away oblivious to her mom lurking in the doorway.

I’ve got me a clean tub, working toilet and blackmail material to ensure future good behaviour. All in all, I’m thinking it was a rather productive day.

For just a mom.