And the story only gets better….

I think I mentioned my toilet. A month or so ago, the little chordy thing inside the toilet broke and ever since it's been fixed, something's been kind of off. It's been kind of creaky, kind of wheezing, kind of a pain in the ass, but nothing too horrible to deal with. Just a slightly minor annoyance, the kind of annoyance that makes you think you should do something about, but not a big enough annoyance to actually do it.

Until last night.

You know what sucks? When the toilet goes kablooey on you at about 10:30 at night. When there's like water everywhere and you find yourself mopping the floor at 11. And then the mop falls apart because there's too much water and you find yourself running to the few open stores in the neighborhood looking for a mop-any kind of mop.

Water, water, everywhere and not a mop to clean.

I tried the plunger. I tried fiddling with the inner workings. I tried flushing. Nothing. Now mopping is kind of easy if it's like a spill or just a regular cleaning. It's not quite so easy when there's oodles and oodles of water everywhere. Out went the old t-shirts. Out went the paper towels. Out went my poor old comforter, all sacrificed to the cause. And I waited, sitting around at the middle of the night waiting to see if the water level would go down. It wasn't. So I grabbed my beloved SF Giants World Series Cup and Pac Bell Grand Opening cup and scooped the water out of the bowl and into the shower.

Finally, at 1 in the morning, I had a dry floor and an empty toilet. Exhausted from a long day, I crashed.

You want to know another thing that sucks? When you wake up for some reason at 4:30 in the morning, notice that there's a loud dripping sound coming from the bathroom that shouldn't be there, and walk into the bathroom to discover that it'ss an inch deep in water. You want to know what the last thing I want to do at 4:30 in the morning is? Fucking mop the floor. Especially with a mop that's leaving clumps of itself everywhere.

Now here's another thing. If all of this had happened during the day, it would be an easy thing to do. Just call the landlord or call a plumber. But what do you do at four in the morning? Landlord's asleep and not around and God only knows what calling one of those 24 hour plumber service thingies would do. Then there's the fact I'm clomping around, throwing buckets and buckets of water down the shower drain while everyone in my not quite so noise-proof apartment complex is trying to sleep.

There's too much water. The mop isn't doing it. So this time I grab my Giants cups and start bailing water. Just scooping it up from the floor and throwing it down the shower drain. Scoop, scoop, scoop. And still the water comes. It drips down from the just overly full toilet bowl and won't stop. I am Mickey Mouse in "Fantasia" except without all the magic and psycho broom sticks. My poor bathmat, which I had put down thinking the coast was clear, was sopping wet.

And then it came to me. I've been in this kind of situation before. Just stop the water that runs to the toilet. Problem- I can't move the damn knob. I even grab a monkey wrench to try and, well, wrench it, and only manage to succeed in chipping part of the knob off. It doesn't budge. The water keeps coming. I keep bailing.

Finally, around 5 or so I get everything back to a manageable level. The toilet bowl is once again emptied and I go to lie back in bed. It's really cold in my apartment and my feet are totally freezing. I know I can't really fall back asleep, what with a toilet that won't stop running, but I'm too tired to not do anything but fall asleep. An hour later, weird paranoid dreams wake me and once again, at 6 in the morning, I scoop away, clearing out the water from another overfilled toilet.

One more thing about all of this. Most people, in a situation like the one I was in, would just think "oh well, I haven't gotten any sleep and my toilet won't stop running, so I'll just call in sick from work and it'll all be better in the morning." Except for one problem- I had already called in sick to do the tax thing. Already pulled that card. And since I work in another town and don't own a car, it's not like it's that easy for me to get into work late. So, basically, I'm praying things go well and sucking it up the next morning on no sleep.

Once again, I go back to bed and lie there waiting for the alarm to go off. Seven comes. The alarm goes off. I trudge back into the bathroom, do some more scooping and sit around watching the previous night's SportsCenter, seeing what'll happen and hoping something happens that means all is well. The toilet behaves. The dripping has stopped and the water in the bowl doesn't rise. With a smattering of water still left on the floor and the bathmat curled up in a corner of the bathroom soaking wet, I hop into the shower to get ready to go to work.

Yesterday kind of sucked.