Chances are, you’ve got your own private list of “likable” words. Such as sunshine, chocolate, babies, laughing, Scrabble, puppies, popcorn. Or phrases like, “No cavities”, “All Paid Up”, “You won!”, or even, “Yes, there will soon be a cure for hair loss in aging women”. In other words, language that tickles your personal warmth factor, that enriches your life, that gives you a grin, not a groan, – a rosy glow, not a pimply rash.

One of my favorite activities has always been spent in front of my sewing machine. Words like stitches, seams, patterns, fabric, yardage – those are nice, friendly words. As a happy home seamstress, I enjoy sewing terminology. Are you getting the picture here? I like everything to do with sewing and with being a veteran sewer.

Yesterday, I got a confusing email from my intrepid realtor who is currently preparing my house to be sold to what we were hoping would be the highest bidder. This was the subject line:
”Your sewer needs a repair”.

Sadly, no, she wasn’t referring to my health. I may be the hobbled, battle-fatigued, deranged former resident of the house – and a dedicated home seamstress – but I wasn’t the “sewer” in need of engineering assistance. It was the one 5 feet underground, the “wasteful” one, the one the sewer inspector has just recommended to be needing an $18,000 spa treatment at my expense.

Now, I’m not really fond of that kind of “sewers”. I realize excrement has to go somewhere, but as a whole, I don’t find sewers to be an exciting aspect of home ownership. In spite of the monumental cost of maintaining one, you will never see a sewer featured on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens. Nobody will ever be bragging about theirs at the bridge table, and you’ll probably never know anyone demented enough to devote an entire blob to one. Except me, of course.

Women are probably fully to blame for sewers. It’s likely the “main” reason sewers were even invented was because of the human females’ high-tech demand for Indoor Plumbing. And toilet paper.

Even in ancient times, plumbing was a problem. It was even an important issue in Game of Thrones – an apt title if there ever was one. According to its author George R.R. Martin, there were two types of waste management covered in detail in his books.

As for the first, do you remember when Jon Snow sent Samwell Tarly to the Citadel to get intel on the Whitewalkers? The maesters who were to train Sam in the Citadel had old fashioned indoor plumbing – bedpans and chamber pots – and Sam was assigned the gross task of emptying them — in full view of the TV audience.

In case you’re interested (and, of course, who wouldn’t be?), in an interview with Vulture.com, Sam’s portrayer, John Bradley was asked “What in the world was in those bedpans?” Here’s his answer:

“Well, if you want to re-create human feces onscreen, the best thing to do is to use soaking-wet fruitcake and mold it into the shape of turds. The thing about wet fruitcake is, when you see it for the first time at 6:30 in the morning, it’s fresh. But when you get to 5 in the afternoon and you’ve been shooting all day, and the wet fruitcake has been in the water and under the hot lights all day, it starts to become only slightly less unpleasant than the real thing.”

I knew you’d want to know that.

The other kind of plumbing described in Game of Thrones was what was actually used in the Middle Ages. “Indoor plumbing” was achieved with cesspits which were often placed under cellar floors. As in the castles of Game of Thrones, they had long wooden chutes to carry excrement from the upper floors to the cesspit, sometimes flushed by rainwater. Every two years or so, the foul-smelling waste was cleaned out by “gong farmers” who were paid 2 shillings for each ton of waste disposed of — somewhat less than the $18,000 I’m expected to pay for similar service in my former Laurelhurst neighborhood in Seattle.

Such a wooden chute would have been plumbed in the Casterly Rock castle, ancestral home of the Lannisters. The nasty Tywin Lannister was sitting on his privy when his son Tyrion shot and killed him with his crossbow. Most likely, Tyrion couldn’t flush his father down the chute though, without causing a serious clog even Draino couldn’t clear.

I know this may not be the most appetizing blob you’ve ever read, but, personally, contemplating the fortune I have to come up with to pay the sewer bill, I feel better now. And it’s at least more lady-like than sucking my thumb in despair.

If you’ve never been a “home owner” yourself, you may not understand who the term “home ownership” is actually referring to. It isn’t you. The home owns you, not the other way around, and it’s best to just surrender and, if you can, pay off the ransom as gracefully as you can.

I’m looking forward to getting my next two bids for the sewer repair on Monday, because I’m hoping one of them might contain some friendlier words than the first one did. Such as, “Ma’am, we can do that little sewer job for you for only two shillings!” That seems like a fair price to me.