Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Slippery when wet

Subtitled - Can't a gal catch a break?

So this morning I go to the bathroom at like 2 AM. I flush the toilet like a normal person and am alarmed to discover that the toilet will not stop flushing. Now for normal home toilets that isn't an issue. Y'all just jiggle the handle or take the tank off and futz with the little ball or whatever. I don't have one of those toilets. I have a flushometer. These are the types of toilets you usually see in commercial places like your office, or the mall or rest stops on the highway. No tank. And apparently no place to shut off the water. (I discovered this at 2:00 AM because I was all anxious about what I did to cause this so I did a bunch of googling until I found what I was looking for.) I also spent a lot of time jiggling the handle and/or speaking to it to tell it to stop flushing and/or making deals with the unknown person in charge of good things happening once in a while to make it stop. Finally I fell asleep. At 5:00 I woke up again. I tried to go back to sleep but I had a lot of anxiety over this toilet thing. I don't know why I'm so paranoid, but anytime anything breaks in my apartment I freak out. I want to fix it myself.

So I wait awhile and finally put a call in to my manager at about 9:15 this morning. He's peeved with me because I should've called sooner. He lives in my building. I've called before at 8:00 and it seemed like I had woken him up so I am never sure when is the appropriate time to call. So he's out of the building but will be back in about an hour. Two hours later he comes and fixes the toilet. According to the manager about 2 - 3 toilets break any time he shuts off the water to the whole building. He had already fixed 3 other toilets the day before. It takes him about 15 minutes. The thing doesn't fit quite right but he can't figure out why it doesn't and just leaves it. Now my toilet makes a weird rather loud sound whenever I flush but whatever, I can flush and that's all that really matters to me.

In other things that occurred...

1 - At about 5 I had to pee. So I went and then I went back into my bedroom and shut the door. I never shut the bedroom door all the way because the door knob has issues and won't turn so that the tumbler (is that the right part?) gets sucked in. I didn't pay attention and shut the door all the way. Fuck. Now I'm panicking about being stuck in the bedroom and the chain is on the front door and my cell and my home phone are in the living room anyway. Finally I keep turning the knob until the knob almost falls off and then the tumbler turns.

2 - I must've peed about 8 times this morning. All the running water was driving me nuts.

3 - Whilst in the bathroom mopping up water (at some point the toilet leaked quite a bit of water onto the floor from a spot on the back) I had shut the bathroom door because otherwise I was getting ferretous help. That's never helpful you know... So I had noticed a random little screw in the stuff on the ground but didn't think where it came from. I went to pull open the bathroom door and the knob came off in my hand. The screw was to the door knob. I found it and put it back on but since the bathroom door doesn't shut all the way anyway (up in the upper left corner it just jams shut because the doorway isn't square anymore) it wasn't as big a concern.

4 - I had been using a sponge to mop up water behind the toilet. So I had a weird percarious balancing thing going on around the toilet but my feet were slipping because damn wet linoleum is slippery and I had been wringing the sponge out in the toilet. I repositioned myself to mop up more water and without thinking I set the sponge in the toilet bowl. And I didn't even notice it get sucked down but when I went to grab it, it was gone and I couldn't for the life of me figure out where it went. I spent like 2 minutes trying to think before it dawned on me where it was.

All in all I have 3 good things about this whole debacle:
1 - Except the tub, my bathroom is clean and the floor recently mopped. ;)
2 - I had my favorite tacos for lunch today because at 11:40 when I was walking to work I walked by them and went in.
3 - I probably won't need this fixed for at least 15 years. (Of course I'll still be in the apartment by then but whatever.)

3 comments:

... said...

You need to move.....

Joanne said...

Believe me, by the 2nd door incident I was thinking the same thing. :) Now I'm calmer again and can see the humour in it and realize I pay fairly little rent compared to my neighbors. Oh and I'm lazy. :)

Kate the Peon said...

Oh, Jo.

:)