Holy Crap

I want tell you a little story about something that just happened to me. Earlier in the day, someone in the house informed me that the toilet upstairs was clogged. I thought to myself at at some point today I would be so happy to take care of that job. But I never got to it, and when I did, I realized that the toilet had been running for a bit. Usually with this kind of thing, you’re given a bit of time. But when your toilet’s taking matters into it’s own hands for over an hour, you see your window of opportunity has pretty much run out. So I assessed the situation. I’ve got a toilet completely full of poop water. If I sink a plunger into it, the poop water will be finding its way through the high hats in my kitchen ceiling and onto the counters. It was too risky. I decided that a bail out would be the best answer. So I’m panicking obviously, because like every seven seconds my toilet decides to run and inject more liquid into the back of the tank which we certainly don’t need finding its way into the bowl. I fumbled around with the back of the toilet and the tank, trying to stop the incessant running only to have found myself in a situation where I disconnected the tube that lets the water flow out slowly. So now I just have water spraying and splashing around and filling up the tank. I’m trying to block it from spraying onto my walls with a small wooden box that I keep in the bathroom for hair ties. They’re back from the days where velveeta and cream cheese came in wooden Borden’s boxes. They’re old as dirt, and they can barely hold hair ties so why would I think they could hold water? We don’t think right in these situations though, do we? So I have it emptied out, (only a few of the hair ties made it into the toilet) and it’s somewhat blocking the spray of the water onto my walls. But the water that does make its way through is now tinged brown because of the hundred year old box it just filtered itself through. So I don’t know if it’s poop water on the walls or Borden‘s brown box water on the walls, but either way, I’m contemplating burning the house down. So, now I need a vessel. I need a vessel to start bailing out the poop water into the tub so that I can stick a plunger in and plunge it. But the water filling so fast it’s causing me to panic. So much water coming in, how do I get the water out? I don’t have a Tupperware or a bowl or a way to bail out my toilet in my bathroom, but I do have a wastebasket! The wastebasket has an inner plastic liner. So I took the cover off the wastebasket and I took out the plastic liner and I decided the fact that it was in a completely oval shape with two handles cut out on the side probably wouldn’t be too much of a problem. I didn’t have time for problems. But every time I tried to catch the water, the majority of it went right back through the handle when I angled it out of the toilet. Every once in a while there’d be a little nugget that appeared there and I thought If I was lucky, or unlucky, it would be large enough to stay within the confines of my wastebasket. But alas, that did not happen. So now it’s filling up, and I’m panicking, because I don’t want shit water on my kitchen ceiling. As far as I know there has never before been poop on my kitchen island, and I really didn’t want today to be the day. So I scream loudly for James who can’t hear shit from his bedroom even if his door is open. He’s actually like 15 feet away from me at this point. But he can’t hear me. He selectively closes out his hearing for the most part and I could scream as loud as I can and he will awaken minutes later in a stupor saying, “huh, what?” “Bro, were you just calling me?” No James, I was just screaming bloody murder in the hopes that our next-door neighbors who live about 10 feet away from the bathroom window might step in to help instead. The deck hands down there on Richmond Terrace heard me, I know that for sure. Well thank goodness (I think) my neighbors were away. And if weren’t away, after the bathroom incident, they packed up all of their belongings silently and were gone for the entire weekend. I don’t blame them. I would want to escape us as well.

I want to escape us.

So we are back to I’m trying to get poop water out of my toilet to make it go to a point where I can plunge it but I don’t have a vessel and the poop water is falling out the hole of my bathroom waste basket. I finally summoned James and I sent him downstairs and I told him “quick, it’s an emergency, move as fast as you can, and bring me a Tupperware or a bowl that can fit into the toilet!” He moves so slowly when we don’t have emergencies. He actually moves slower in an emergency. He brings the dog’s water bowl. It’s fine, I didn’t intend to throw away the dog’s water bowl today but I will, without hesitation, as soon as it’s done it’s job. Luckily we will have another one in two days with free delivery and I’m not gonna sweat it. So here I am dunking the dogs water ball into the toilet scooping up vessels of poop water and hurriedly putting it into the tub. Finally Gordon emerges. It seems like it’s been 10 minutes but it was probably only three. He was in the pool trying to “relax.” Good luck with that over here. He comes upstairs bringing more water to the floor and helps me with the bailing out process. He’s insisting that’s it’s ready to plunge. IT IS NOT READY TO PLUNGE! It doesn’t happen often, but he saw the genuine look of concern in my eyes and backed down on the plunge. He helped me with the “bailing” process. It involved foul language and fouls smells. Thankfully since I had Covid in January I still can’t properly smell poop. So it was likely less offensive to me than it was to him but me having seen what I saw, you just can’t unsee that. It’s not a competition though. I’ve learned this. It also may stink equally and that works too. So now we’ve got the toilet down to a level where we can plunge it, and success!! All of the poop water (in the bowl) left us. Sweet Relief! He then took the hoses that were spraying all over, secured them like it was a piece of cake and complained about how that toilet has sucked since the day we moved in. He went downstairs to find cleaning products and emerged a moment later asking me one very simple question. Did you happen to shut the water off?

Well if I was in someone else’s house and this problem happened, I would’ve immediately shut their water off and educated them to the fact that they have a valve right there that controls the flow and they have more control than they think they have. But because the problem happened in my house, the valve was never touched. All of the safety measures that people had put in place to save us from problems like this, I did not use. Instead I panicked and I tried to take water out of a toilet bowl with a wastebasket with a cutout. My moral of the story is, flush halfway through. In the event of an emergency, shut the water off first. It will save you a lot of headache.