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If it comes in a cardboard box from Home Depot, I usually maintain a hands-off policy. The contents of those boxes tend to need assembly, and that requires either strength or manual dexterity, neither of which I have. And if I thought I could physically manage the project, I might still be defeated by pictograph instructions that I couldn’t interpret.

It’s rare that I accompany Andrew on a trip to Home Depot in the first place. I walk in with a sense of wonderment at how big and therefore promising it is, but within moments am disillusioned by how little of it entices me. This weekend, as a gesture of goodwill, I volunteered to go with him. I brought a book. When he wandered into the outdoor garden supply area, I retired to the heated room that sells tropical plants and lawn furniture. I chose a patio set I liked, settled in a chair and opened my book. I got a few envious looks. Apparently I’m not the only spouse who finds Home Depot exhausting.

In a classic Home Depot kind of way, the trip resulted in an eclectic mix of purchases; some kind of organic lawn care stuff, a spreader for said stuff, a bulb for the garage flood light, and two toilet seats. I had been concerned that we hadn’t measured the existing seats, but learned that there are only two types: round and elongated. Who knew?

When we got home, we dropped the toilet seats in the upstairs hallway. Andrew’s priority, however, was the lawn, so he spent the rest of the afternoon happily using his new spreader. The next day he went to work, the toilet seats still in the hall. Each time I passed those boxes I thought, what if I didn’t have Andrew? By mid-afternoon I’d made up my mind; I was going to replace the toilet seats myself.

I started by removing an existing seat from its toilet. I was amazed at how easy it turned out to be. Two big plastic screws held it in place; that was all there was to it. I figured that out without written instructions or pictures. And wonder of wonders, the new ones worked the same way! In a matter of minutes I was finished. I was inordinately proud of myself. I had tackled a cardboard box from Home Depot and prevailed.

I am woman, hear me roar! There is nothing I can’t do. I have proven once again that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Hang on, I hear a drip. The sink in the upstairs bathroom seems to be leaking. It probably needs to have something tightened, or a washer replaced. I’ll ask Andrew to take care of it. Meanwhile, I’m going to go buy my fish a bicycle.

I may never sell my young adult novel, but nonetheless I’ve been thinking about the acknowledgements page, the writer’s equivalent to an Oscar-night acceptance speech. I have a good idea of who I’ll include; my early readers, the women in my critique group, my family, particularly my husband whose generous nature has enabled me to shun a paycheck to pursue my dream. But what I’d really like to write is an anti-acknowledgements page, a no thanks to you page.

I’m not vindictive by nature, truly I’m not. I would, however, like to heal the psychic wounds inflicted by those who innocently or otherwise professed a lack of faith in me along the way (including my sixth grade math teacher). To that end, an anti-acknowledgements page could be cathartic.

When I was twelve, I had a Hebrew school teacher who was probably not much older than nineteen or twenty, though he seemed much older at the time. One day I said that I didn’t believe in God and he replied, “You’re too young to know what you believe.” I was incensed that he could so cavalierly dismiss my admission. Later, sometime early in my freshman year at Brandeis, I was at the pub on campus when a man in his mid-twenties, a graduate student I guessed, pulled up the bar stool next to me. He was trying to pick me up when I recognized him as that Hebrew school teacher. I seized the moment. “I wouldn’t go out with you if you were the last man on earth,” I said. “And I still don’t believe in God.” Talk about cathartic.

Think about all the little indignities you’ve suffered in your life. Given the opportunity, wouldn’t you love to, just once, settle an old score? In twelve-step programs you are expected to make amends to people you’ve hurt. How about a one-step program where you track down the people who have hurt you and demand an apology?

There’s a great line in The Wizard of Oz when Hickory, the farmhand says, “Someday, they’re going to erect a statue to me,” and Auntie Em snaps back, “Don’t start posing for it now.” She’d probably tell me to forget about writing an acknowledgements page until I need one. Of course, she’d also probably tell me that I was being foolish and selfish, and to get over myself, that there was real work to be done. And she’d be right, but as we all know, that doesn’t mean that a girl can’t dream…

My treadmill is broken. It could be repaired ─ for six hundred dollars. It would be less expensive if I bought the parts and did it myself, but I can’t even write that without laughing. So now what?

If I bought a new treadmill or some other piece of exercise equipment from Sears, they would deliver it and cart away the old one. But I don’t want a new one. I pay forty dollars a month to a local gym and I work out with a trainer every other week. The last thing I want to do is spend more money on exercise.

Our guest room has doubled as a gym since the treadmill moved in. Andrew thinks its presence detracts from the room’s feng shui. However, company always politely comments on how convenient it is to hang clothes on, though I suspect they’d rather have space in the closet. I wouldn’t mind reclaiming the space myself. The problem is figuring out where old treadmills go to die.

Even if I could put it out on the curb for the garbage truck, which I’m fairly certain the town would frown on, I don’t think Andrew and I could carry it downstairs ourselves. And I am green enough to want to recycle it. It has been suggested that I take it apart and offer the electronic parts to a tinkerer’s studio. Taking it apart doesn’t seem much easier to me than fixing it myself, although thinking about it isn’t as comical.

I looked at the web site for the service Got Junk. They let you schedule a pickup online, which is very convenient. I know it costs something because they offer ten dollars off if you schedule for that day, but nowhere do they tell you what that cost is. Wouldn’t it be amusing if it turned out to be six hundred dollars?

I offered the treadmill online for free, thinking some hardy do-it-yourself-er would be interested in the challenge. Instead I heard from several other people facing the same predicament. If I could figure out how to get rid of my own treadmill, I could start a small business doing it for others.

I could try to do something creative with it, right where it sits. I could turn it into a plant stand, rewire it and make it a lamp, paint it in neon colors and call it an art installation. Those solutions would merely postpone the inevitable, because at the end of the day, it would still be a big, heavy, awkward piece of equipment. The advantage would be that in another twenty or thirty years, I could pass the problem along to my daughter. Hmm. I think I have some paint in the basement.

Last summer, in the Adirondacks, we hiked up to a swimming hole with a waterfall. It was as storybook a spot as you could hope to find, except for one thing. While we were there, a couple, a man and a woman, both lit cigars. Now, there are a lot of odors that repel people that I quite enjoy; gasoline, nail polish remover, magic markers and wet paint, to name a few. Outdoors or in, I love the smell of smoke from a fire or a joint. I’ll even admit that under just the right circumstances a passing whiff of cigarette smoke can send me into a reverie. However, I draw the line at cigars.

The smell of cigar smoke is in the same category as dog poop on your shoe, a dirty litter box, rotten fish, too much chlorine and lutefisk. It is neither romantic nor evocative. In a word, it stinks.

When the smoke wafted toward us, my mother-in-law and I exchanged horrified looks. And yet, surprisingly, neither one of us, both women who are known to talk to complete strangers everywhere we go, said anything to the cigar smokers. There were lots of other people at this swimming hole (which is what kept it from moving up the scale from storybook to idyllic) and none of them said anything either.

I’d like to claim that I didn’t want to embarrass my daughter, but that’s never stopped me before. It could be that I didn’t want to start an international incident (I don’t know what language the couple was speaking, but it wasn’t English). But I think the real reason I refrained from saying anything is that I figured I didn’t have a leg to stand on. I anticipated that they would say that the great outdoors is something we are all supposed to share equally and I wouldn’t have a good comeback. While their behavior was certainly ruining my experience, I wasn’t convinced that my right not to breathe their smoke trumped their right to expel it.

There are a lot of things that I find abhorrent that others tolerate, ignore, or (gasp) enjoy. I’m not fond of other people’s children and there were plenty of them there. Clearly I couldn’t ask the parents to remove them. I don’t like it when people let their dogs run loose, but several dogs were enjoying the swimming hole as much as their oblivious owners. The only rational choice seemed to be to remove ourselves from the vicinity of the cigar smokers, which, ultimately, we did.

Recently, I’ve been reading about a movement afoot to ban outdoor smoking in parks and other public spaces. I was going to end this piece with how I feel about that, but after half a dozen tries I give up. I appreciate the dangers of second-hand smoke, and there are lots of restrictions on what you can do outside, but if the offended party can simply walk away, why do we need to create another law? Discuss amongst yourselves. I’m out of here.

I collect empty plastic bottles in a box in the garage. When the box overflows, I transfer the bottles to a thirty-gallon plastic bag, put it in the back of the car, and head for the bottle recycling station at Stop & Shop. After I park, I re-stuff the plastic bag with the bottles that have scattered and, already slightly annoyed, haul my unwieldy burden across the parking lot.

There are three machines for returns; one each for cans, plastic and glass. I walk up to the one in the middle, for plastic, and my blood pressure skyrockets, because the display reads, Error, contact service. On the rare occasion that the error message is not displayed, and I am able to start recycling my bottles, I make barely a dent in my collection before the display informs me that the machine is now full and I must contact service.

There is a phone next to the machines for these times, but it dangles false hope. Last time I was there, it was dead. The time before, it was missing altogether. Without a way to summon help, I am in a quandary. Do I walk across the parking lot to put the bag of bottles back in the car before I go into the store to find help, in which case I’ll need to retrace my steps yet again to retrieve them, or do I drag them with me into the store and risk upsetting the more fastidious shoppers? This past weekend, I went into the store, bag and all.

When I saw the line at the customer service desk, I almost cried. A sympathetic, or perhaps nervous, bagger located someone to help me. That person tapped someone to send out to the machine, but then had to track down the employee who had wandered off with the key. Once back outside, I waited while my new best friend removed unprocessed bottles from the maw of the machine, and then emptied the full bags of shredded plastic, tying them very neatly. By the time he was finished, I had been at the store for twenty minutes.

For my aggravation, I claimed one dollar and fifty-five cents.

I don’t think I can bring myself to go through that insane dance one more time. But even though I can afford to sacrifice one dollar and fifty-five cents, it would be a shame not to get that money to someone who needs it. So, next time the box in the garage overflows, I will spend the twenty minutes I would inevitably devote to shredding them at Stop & Shop, to search the web for an individual or a charity to give the bottles to. And the next time I go to the supermarket, I will resist the urge to glance at the display on the plastic bottle machine.