Picture it: Your husband works for "The Agency" and you're never exactly sure where he is. You're snowbound with all the kids. They're in, they're out, the gloves are lost, the socks are wet, the dryer is churning. Your teenage daughter is drawing a bubble bath when the guy she adores calls. She takes the portable phone to the computer to IM her best friend with the exciting news. While she's talking on the phone and chatting online, she decides to check out the price of some concert tickets on the web, too. With all this modern multitasking, who can blame her if the tub overflows? Water ruins the bathroom floor, runs down and wrecks the wallpaper in the family room below and shorts out the dryer in the basement--all before anyone notices. What's a woman to do?

Fortunately, Julie Sussman, AS '82, and her pal Stephanie Glakas-Tenet have come to the rescue of would-be repairwomen everywhere with their book, Dare To Repair, A Do-It-Herself Guide to Fixing (Almost) Anything in the Home.

The down-to-Earth, easy-to-follow guide has created quite a buzz with articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, Readers' Digest and People magazine and appearances by the authors on The Today Show, The View, Good Morning America and CBS News, to name a few.

The story behind the popular book is an interesting one. Sussman and Glakas-Tenet really are CIA wives (George Tenet is director of the agency), who had to learn to cope with absent husbands, low budgets and lots of household repairs early in their married lives.

"Twelve years ago, my husband traveled all the time with the agency and I kept a 'honey do' list of chores for him to complete on the weekends," Sussman explains. "About that time, I met a woman whose husband had just died of cancer at the age of 36. As she was trying to mend her broken heart, all sorts of things in her house were breaking down. I realized then that I needed to learn to be more resourceful."

Sussman went searching for a home repair book geared for a woman or a novice and was dismayed by the choices.

"All the books were written by men for men and all of the illustrations were of men. It was so bizarre, as if only white men could do home repairs," she says.

Her mission quickly became to write a home repair book for women, never mind that the only writing she'd ever done was years before for Newark (Del.) High School newspaper, The Yellowjacket Buzz.

"Shortly after that, I met Stephanie at a barbecue. She was so handy! Her husband had recently come home to find her up on the roof repairing the mortar around the chimney!"

Sussman says she knew she had found the perfect publishing partner.

The two developed a survey and sent it to 500 women asking them what they would like see in a home-repair guide. They then decided that they would have to try every repair themselves before putting it in a book.

"You know how sometimes a recipe is a really bad recipe but it just keeps getting passed down? That's how we decided that it was vital for us to do everything before publishing. We found that many times manufacturer's instructions are wrong, that they leave out a very important step. Every time we found that error, we let the manufacturers know."

The recipe theory also helped with the design of the book. At the beginning of each set of instructions, there is a list of tools needed for the project--just like recipe ingredients. Helpful illustrations show readers just exactly what things like a small C-clamp, an allen wrench or slip-joint pliers look like.

When it comes to something like clearing a clogged kitchen sink drain, the book also takes into account and gives directions for fixing several types of sinks--single or double sink, with or without garbage disposal. It can make a big difference.

The tone of the book is also entertaining. The sink chapter, for instance, begins, "Twas Christmas night when Katy's kitchen sink and garbage disposal decided that 20 pounds of potato peels was enough and quit cold turkey! Later, while Katy and her husband were washing the dishes (in the bathtub), they talked of how they couldn't afford a plumber and decided that the more 'handy' of the two would have to fix it. With the right tools and determination, Katy tackled the job successfully. Total cost: $4.49. Newfound confidence: Priceless."

Being a repair novice, Sussman knew what other women needed to know. For example, she says, "Never assume that your smoke detector is battery-operated. Find out how it works before you have an emergency."

Another practical tip: "Buy two fire extinguishers instead of one. You need one to practice with," she explains. "You can't stand there and read the directions when you have a fire."

The phenomenal amount of publicity the book has generated has led the authors to conduct home- repair workshops in depressed areas of New York City, as well as to wives on two military bases. They are planning to partner with a large bank to teach repairs to first-time home buyers and may offer workshops at the Smithsonian Institution. With the wives of White House Cabinet members, they built a house for Habitat for Humanity.

Personal feedback from widows, divorced and single women and new homeowners has been great. Sussman's two biggest fans, son Chad and daughter Rebecca, are thrilled with their mom's success and love to hear teachers talking about the book in their school. Husband Jerry, of course, is happy that the "honey do" list is a thing of the past.

What's the most rewarding repair Sussman has ever completed?

"The first one," she says. "It's always the most rewarding. That's when you can say, 'I can do this! What was I waiting for?'" *

--Beth Thomas