"When I began peeing in the bathtub, my husband insisted it was time to move to Providence. He had grown up there — and he’d be able to run his family business. 'The kids will have more space,' he said. 'And if we don’t like it, we can always come back.'... As soon as we purchased the 'beautiful Dutch Colonial,' I was seized with panic. My husband already knew about, and barely tolerated, my penchant for returning things. The most Thoreauvian person I know, he purchased almost nothing in the first place. We were all burdened by our possessions; like Thoreau, he believed we had become 'the tools of our tools.'... [W]hat was it that made me want to reverse our decision...?... It was because the neighborhood wasn’t walkable and I, a New-Orleanian-turned-New-Yorker, didn’t know how to drive well.... [T]he nearest playground or coffee shop a mile away...."
Writes Jackie Delamatre, in
"I Had Buyer’s Remorse. It Almost Ended My Marriage. When you can’t agree on the right city to live in, home can be more hell than haven" (NYT).
The way to avoid buyer's remorse is not to buy anything new. But you can't be peeing in the bathtub because of the rats in the toilet.
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74 comments:
"The way to avoid buyer's remorse is not to buy anything new. But you can't be peeing in the bathtub because of the rats in the toilet." That's what my dad always said!
Maybe not living in providence
This is the first time I have read someone imply that New Orleans is "walkable".
Rat bites on your ass is a small price to pay for big city life.
That has got to be the dumbest story I ever read, about the most pathetic woman on earth. 'Sad' doesn't even begin to cover it.
New Orleans to New York; she should have been used to rats. I feel for the husband.
Was this actually a new type of bidet? Sam Brinton would by double for those rats! What joy, what pleasure!
Harry Burns: She’s the worst kind; she’s high maintenance, but she thinks she’s low maintenance.
I don't even know what's going on here. "Buyers' remorse" - are they trying to keep people from fleeing NYC?
Providence is walkable if you buy in the right area.
A Dutch Colonial in New York? Horrors!
To live in NYC, you endure and adapt. Fun when you're young, but not a place to raise kids. The safer apartment has rats in the toilet? Good Lord.
I’d botched my husband’s vision for our life
Give her credit for owning it, but it's hard to build a future if you don't think this shit through.
Also may they didnt do proper inspection
If you can work around the rats in the toilet, it was a great place to live. What?!?!
Those words you are using...
Decades ago we’d go to Mexico Beach in the panhandle of Florida and stay in a little cabin on the beach that belonged to my in-laws. Although I never witnessed it, there were reports of rattlesnakes coming up through the toilets in the neighborhood. What could possibly go wrong?
Just the punchline: the doctor said you’re gonna die…
First they sell the Provincetown house and move back to a basement apartment in Brooklyn, from which he COMMUTES to Provincetown, where he stays overnight several days a week, because that's where HIS JOB is. Finally, she gets remorseful about that and they do the thing that was obvious to me from the complaints about the Provincetown house: Move to a more downtown part of Provincetown.
Seth Rogen says "That's just city life." Or he did say that, before he got rats crawling up his own drainpipe.
Regarding peeing the bathtub, I was once in a house where a bat was living in the tub drain. It'd peek out under the stopper.
Rats or bats. Take your pick.
Why did Charlie Brown shit in the bathtub?
"Rats!"
Or maybe it was gerbils.
meanwhile..
"..Mamdani reverses campaign promise for rental assistance program
—turns out it's too expensive.."
Mamdani said that the city had to choose;
between giving money to "undocumented citizens";
or helping NY residents.. There is Not Enough money for both.
https://thepostmillennial.com/mamdani-reverses-campaign-promise-for-rental-assistance-program-turns-out-its-too-expensive
Anna Madeley is much better-looking and, I suspect, much easier to get along with.
Finally, she gets remorseful about that and they do the thing that was obvious to me from the complaints about the Provincetown house: Move to a more downtown part of Provincetown.
It doesn’t sound as though the problem was in her husband not listening to her when they decided to leave. It seems as though she declined fully to paerticipate in the decision to leave their old house.
It’s not just pissing in the bathtub, it’s why would you raise your children where there are rats? What kind of mother is that?
At least the drainpipe was too small for the sewer alligators to climb up.
Provincetown? Provincetown ? ? This story is taking on whole new dimensions, now.
Erma bombeck she isnt
https://www.guggenheim.org/articles/author/jdelamatre
We had rats in our toilet too, but in that case the toilet was an outhouse in the back yard. I guess rats in the city are different than rats in the country?
(Even worse than rats in the outhouse were snakes in the outhouse, which was the real problem with the rats: they attracted the latter.)
Lazarus said...
"Or maybe it was gerbils."
If it had been Provincetown, as Ann wrote, it would have been Gerbils. It was Providence, a three hours midtown-to-midtown train commute from NYC.
and then... she ate a spider.
Sure why not
Do they understand how ridiculous they come across
"When I began peeing in the bathtub…”
I would have moved long before that point.
A ratocracy, equitable and inclusive.
Well, the rats are under the command of the Rat King. Kill him, and they will leave you alone.
According to Reddit, the way to defeat the Rat King is to shoot, run, shoot, run. And use your flamethrower a lot. Pick up any spare ammo along the way.
This may have been advice for a video game, though.
Shithouse mouse! No rats allowed!!!
The chuds get in the way everytime
I'm peein' in the tub,
Just peein' in the tub,
What a glorious feelin’,
Aye, now that’s the rub
I'm laughin’ at the rats
Wishin’ for some cats
I'll give you one guess how she votes ...
Honestly, the whole thing sounds made up. Nobody could be that screwy, could they?
Whoa. Calm down. A Federal Judge will soon Order years of due process for the rats to please the Demonrat Party.
We once found a rat in our office.
Two women who had been raised on a farm thought they were up to the task. They grabbed two shovels, closed the door behind them, and all we could hear after that was:
“Scream scream—bam bam! Scream scream—bam bam!”
It went on like that for a while until they finally emerged, victorious.
I know. I know. Poor rat. But mission accomplished.
traditionalguy said...
“Whoa. Calm down. A Federal Judge will soon Order years of due process for the rats to please the Demonrat Party.”
Well, yeah. Undocumented entry is no reason to kidnap or even murder a rat, especially if it hasn’t committed any crimes since it’s been there.
Providence, not Provincetown. Husband is a saint; woman is typical NYC whacko. Feel for her family.
Im not a rat expert, but I sure there's a way to keep rats out of your sewage pipes. And did she consider the street porta potty was occupied? When you need to go, you gotta go. Even if you're a rat.
Poor upper class professionals. I feel so sorry for those who have friends at the NYT's. At any moment your life may become a news article.
Actually, there's nothing wrong with peeing in bathtub. Except the rats may follow your lead.
They elected the rat king
I vacationed once in Provincetown. The pictures in the rental house we stayed at were certainly a sight to behold.
"It was because the neighborhood wasn’t walkable and I, a New-Orleanian-turned-New-Yorker, didn’t know how to drive well"
Then learn, and stop being such a pathetic person
This is all because she got caught peeing in the bathtub, and came up with this rat story. Someone should have just told her that it's OK. We all do it.
To be fair, if someone offered me the choice, "you can have rats biting your rear, or you can live in Providence," I'd have to think about it.
Whats the upside
I suspect she embellished the story by omitting the fact that she was peeing in a camp toilet of some kind, a bucket with a seat, essentially and it was located in the bath tub, because if she was just peeing right in the tub, where was she pooping? She have to be an idiot to just pee and poop in the tub.
She sounds neurotic.
Sounds like a "save the environment low-flush toilet problem".
Adjust for max water volume/flow, flush before you sit down. Plenty of fiber to speed things up.
Bob Boyd: She sounds neurotic.
City women when exposed to nature...princess and the pea...
Farm women get over it, especially when they start young. Mothers get over it after changing a few hundred diapers and cleaning up a baby's "there" every day.
Somehow Zappa-esque.
and she looks almost exactly as I imagined she would....
What third-world country was she living in?!
It's actually amazing what New Yorkers will put up with just to remain in New York. I don't know if that tells me how great the city is that it gets people to accept what most people would not, or how insane the people are living there.
Or maybe it's just that so many of them have no knowledge of any other place and are so fixed and comforted by what they know, that any change is worse than rats biting your favorite parts when you're on the toilet.
The neurosis is staggering.
As Will Cuppy suggested "A few Cobras in your home will soon clear it of Rats and Mice. Of course, you will still have the Cobras."
This wasn't a case of buyer's remorse. This was a case of mental unhealth. Modern society seems to be obsessed with downplaying actual mental health issues, and pathologizing every single personality quirk or character defect.
The kind of story that begs the question: What positive things does she bring to the marriage?
"I Am in Love with my Own Neuroses"
She had dat Camarillo Brillo…
Having rats surface in your toilet bowl would be pretty disturbing, but nothing like my brother-in-law's problem with snakes doing the same. They weren't the venomous kind often found in Florida's Ocala National Forest, but still, folks who had borrowed or rented his cabin in the woods were not amused in the least. Especially the wives.
Home maintenance tip: keep snakes out of your toilet by placing a heavy wire screen over your vent stack. It works.
According to Narciso's link, She is an art teacher with a BA from Brown University. In Providence. Where, presumably, she met her husband.
Providence is not a bad place to live. And driving is not really such a hard thing to learn.
Is there any mention of a mother-in-law in the story?
So is her "buyers remorse" over the house or the marriage??
Not sure where they moved to in Providence (not Provincetown), but Dutch Colonial Revivals are about the nicest--and most domestic--residential homes ever constructed (IMHO, YMMV). The cascading tension and resentment will continue to build until neither can take anymore and the inevitable split occurs. Over/under that will occur just as they think of moving in two years. Sad.
HP Lovecraft grew up and lived in Providence, with a brief excursion to NYC, which he hated. He also wrote “The Rats in the Walls.” It’s all coming together. Next stop: The King in Yellow.
I always flush before sitting on the can. You never know what might be down there.
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