It’s raining in my bathroom.
The man on the other end of the line chuckled. “That’s not good, is it? Let me send someone over to take care of that.”
I put down the phone and picked up a mop. It was 9:35. I’d been zonked out on the living room sofa for a good hour when the sound of water smacking linoleum roused me from my delicious Tuesday evening coma. Plop! Plop! In my sleepy haze, I misinterpreted it for the sounds of cat mischief.
“Knock it off, Hal!”
Grumbling, I yanked the thread worn chenille blanket up to my chin and prepared for coma re-entry. Five, four, three. In whoosh and the crisp snap of claws on couch, Hal’s round black face appeared over the arm of the sofa, looking foolish and eager. You rang? I freed an arm from my blanketed cocoon to give him a lazy, grateful scratch on the chin.
Plop! Plop!
Cripes. The ruckus was decidedly not cat mischief. By the time I found the source of the plop!, there was a tire-sized puddle on the bathroom floor. I swore (the f dash-dash-dash word). At the edge of the puddle, a brand spanking new giant roll of Charmin Ultra Soft lay, displaced from the roller, disintegrated in a soggy gray heap. I swore again. Then I called maintenance, cleaned up the mess and waited.
And waited. When I got tired of wringing out the mop, I installed garbage cans to catch the water. Then I waited some more, horizontally. Sometime after 12:30, I gave in to sleep and dreamed that my coworker had turned into a zombie and was trying to eat my work friends. Our panicked fleeing made a steady rhythm – slap! slap! slap! – mimicking the bathroom weather system. When I woke up, it was dawn. No one had come to fix the problem, which was now a lake, shored up by the soggy hallway carpet. I took in the sodden shower curtain and the trickle that had wriggled down the bathroom mirror into the cabinet, destroying the remaining five rolls of Charmin. More f dash-dash-dashes followed. Exhausted from a night of escaping the living dead, I abandoned my long-held rule about not taking out my frustrations of people in the service industry. I redialed maintenance and swore into the answering machine.
“You owe me some f-dashing toilet paper!”
Ugh! How awful…but at least your entire bathroom ceiling hadn’t fallen, as mine had one night…and nobody came for three days…and when they finally did show up (when i wasn’t there), they let my cat out…and I wandered the streets for a whole afternoon calling her name only to find out that someone in my building had her but had not returned her even though I posted signs. Ah, the joys of renting.
“F dash dash dash!!”
Sorry kiddo!
Have ‘em check for mold. Even if you don’t think you’re allergic.
Ugh, that’s terrible Fish. I’ve been there, twice in the same apt, actually. First time was practically the whole place (our toilet decided to imitate Old Faithful). Second time, the guy upstairs fell asleep in the bathtub with the water running. There is nothing worse than the sound of rain *in your walls and on your ceiling* I was seriuosly traumatized by the sound of dripping water for years afterwards.
I hope you get all the f-ing toilet paper you are entitled to (and more!) Keep up the great blogging.
I can relate to the f dash-dash-dashes. I used many of them when I had 2 maintenance people fixing the air conditioning in a townhouse I was renting. One of them knocked off the head of the sprinkler in the ceiling, causing a waterfall down my living room wall. The water could not be shut off until the fire department came to unlock the valve and shut off water to the whole row of houses. The icing on the cake was that it was my birthday and I had a party/cookout planned that night at my house. The party went on, everyone left their shoes on, and it became one of those stories to re-tell at future birthdays.
Good luck with the clean up!
I can empathize big-time. Someyeas ago i had established myself in what i thought was a pretty cool exposed-brick , huge space, very reasonable rent basement apartment. One inconvenience though was the presence of the buildings water heater … which provided me, the store above and the two apartmetns above that with hot water. all fine and dandy until on a 3 a.m. bathroom call i walked into a small lake / swamp / whatever you choose to call it. My landlord referred to it as a “spill” … the repair guy (when he eventually came) announced not only was it a few hundred gallons spill, but that they hadnt made this model for years … well it ruined the carpet, totally humidified my record collection and expanse of treasured books, and contributed to the increased spread of what i later found out was black mold. needless to say i have never found a new place in so short a time after that.
ah…the mother of all swear words. Hoorah for A Christmas Story.
Ugh! I remember calls to our maintenance man. Now we own our own home though. So I get to nag on my husband. For days. For weeks. For months. Trust me, a late landlord is a better deal.
Hell yes, especially since you buy the good **** when it comes to TP. None of that 1/2 ply Scotch for you.
The exact same thing happened to me yesterday morning. I woke up to a monsoon coming through the vents in my bathroom. It was definitely not pleasant and the apartment office wasn’t open yet… and of course, the cause upstairs was by renovation people who didn’t speak any english and my spanish knowledge consisting of 10 words did not get across the extent of what was going on.
Sigh.
Have I mentioned that my upstairs neighbour’s toilet overflowed into my master bathroom? Twice! Very early in the morning both times. Different tenants each time. Argh. There’s nothing like mopping up sewage water and washing dirty bath mats at godforsaken hours to make a girl really, really “F dash dash dash”ing cranky!!
OMG! I have recurring nightmares about zombies. I am constantly battling them. Apparently if you dream about them it means you feel emotionally disconnected to what’s going on in your life.