Edna Gardner, who goes by Ed, is over-educated and under-employed, approaching 40 and overweight. She hasn't had a date in several presidential administrations, works several part-time jobs (professor, graphic designer, photographer and journalist among them), and has resigned herself to a future with her drunken sister, Gertrude, as a roommate in the dying steel town where they were born.

Her life consists of one comedic tragedy after another, until the day skunks invade her backyard.

Then, she hires Clint Anderson to trap her skunks, and he revives her interest in men, builds her confidence and shows her that maybe she can fall in love.