Why we’re the Den of Chaos

Are you ready for the morning? Here we go:

While looking into some things around a stock I own that is currently facing fairly serious allegations of insider trading and outright fraud, I got interrupted by Eldest, who announces the toilet upstairs is overflowing and that there’s poop in it.

So I go upstairs and find that not only is the toilet overflowing, but it apparently has been overflowing for some time. The floor is literally and with a ruler 3” underwater. This is a large bathroom. If California suffers another drought, you’ll know who to blame.

Once I got done shrieking incoherently, I begin dealing with a very smelly water problem in the bathroom. Did I mention that I hate having to deal with toilets in general? I dislike cleaning them, and when they need plunging I’d just really…rather not.

So I collected every single bath towel I own and started trying to mop up the mess. Lord. There was more water than a hundred bath towels could handle in there. Ugh!!

Meanwhile, one of my dearest friends in the world arrived to collect her precious son, whom I have been stuffing with junk food, permitting to stay up too late and allowing to watch cartoons and/or play video games all weekend. She came up and knocked on the door, and I stood there dripping smelly water yelling down the stairs: “Eldest! Hey! Eldest! Go and let her in! At the door! Go and open the door and let her in! Godson’s Mommy! She’s at the DOOR! No, the FRONT DOOR! GO TO THE FRONT DOOR AND LET HER IN!!!!!!!”

Suddenly, the child who can’t be kept from opening the door for every screwball and ax murderer who happens by can’t remember how to turn the damned knob. I only hope she can hear me bellowing and knows we’re actually home, and haven’t kidnapped her son to Alaska or something.

“Hi!” I shout from upstairs when (eventually) she’s let into the house, trying to sound cheerful and not gag. “I’ve got…a toilet problem… up here. Be down in a minute!!”

Fifteen towels later…the water is mostly sorta contained. Mostly. And, there are about twenty bath towels in the tub slowly dripping nasty water into the drain. Uck. The floor feels weird and the smell is…pervasive.

There is not enough bleach in the northern hemisphere to make me feel comfortable about that bathroom again, I’m serious.

And, the water had soaked into the hall carpet in a large radius. A large brownish radius.

It. Is. Disgusting.

But I did my best to pretend it wasn’t happening while my friend was here. We chatted about this and that while my mind persistently whispered to me that the water was doing God Knew What to the flooring up there, and wondering if e coli could continue to breed once the carpet had dried, and pondering the relative merits of potential e coli infestation versus large bleached-out circles from pouring Clorox over the afflicted areas…

I think I also washed my hands about sixteen times while she was standing there. I’d think about those towels up there, and suddenly my hands would “need” to be washed. Again.

She probably thinks I have really gone around the bend.

But I am glad I managed to refrain from muttering, “Out, out damned spot!” as I did it.

Then I realized, after they had driven away, that I did not think to offer her so much as a glass of water, or perchance a quick lunch or anything. I was so consumed by the thought of That Bathroom that I let a friend come into my house right over the lunch hour and go out again to face drive-thru fare without so much as a ‘want a sandwich?’.

**groan**

Oh well. There’s probably still e coli on my hands, which would mean that if I fed her, I’d probably give her a case of hemorrhagic colitis. It is, after all, pernicious stuff , e coli.

Yup. Probably got it all over me at this point. Just a walking e coli Petri dish, that’s me…

Excuse me. I’m going to go wash up again…maybe with a little Clorox, this time…and some steel wool…