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Oct. 20th, 2003 09:51 pmSo. I'm REALLY glad we're moving in 2 weeks. Make that 12 days. We are moving in 12 days. I'm glad about this because I'm currently livid with our current residence. And, seeing as we're moving in 12 days, there isn't much that can be done about it.
Why am I livid, you ask? Well, let me tell you. Sunday Jeff, Alex, and I spent a lovely afternoon buying the last parts for Jeff's new computer, replacing my watch battery, and buying a movie (Snatch, for anyone interested... I love it and have wanted it for ever so long... found it for $10 too, woohoo!). We ate a lovely dinner with his parents and delighted in the renewed/saved/no-longer-in-trouble marriage of his sister and her nice husband. We come home, I put Alex to bed. I go to use the bathroom as I've had rather a lot to drink and have an exceptionally full bladder. The water in the toilet is below-level. This is a bad sign. I don't use the toilet but instead flush it to see if it's plugged up somewhere. The water doesn't drain and instead fills up the bowl. Stops just below the rim. Yay. I pull the shower curtain back so I can find the plunger (it's rather ugly and hides in the corner behind the shower curtain) to try and unclog whatever is gunking up the drain. I get a quick glimpse of the tub and immediately forget about the toilet. The bathtub is lined, bottom and halfway up the sides, with black slimey mess. What that means, ladies and gentlemen, is that drains were blocked and overflowed into the only places they could go... into bathtubs, sinks, and toilets. I call Jeff in. He assess the situation. A little water from the tap in the bathtub proves to be a bad idea. It's doesn't go down the drain. The sink runs mostly okay, as does the kitchen sink, and there is no water on the floor which means nothing overflowed while we were gone, just backed up. This is good.
We called the emergency maintanence crew, as not having a toilet to use is considered an emergency. After 15 minutes I'm so desperate for a pee that I get in the car and drive to the nearest available public toilet (which happened to be in a gas station). It's the nastiest public toilet I think I've ever been in, but it worked and I returned home. We wait two hours and they never show up. So we call my parents. I get Alex up, Jeff and I pack a change of clothes and immediate necessities and spend the night at my parent's house. The guest room is currently undergoing a major cleaning so we couldn't stay there. That left the two twin beds (used to be my bunk beds) in Alex's room, so that's where Jeff and I slept. Only Jeff is too tall to fit into a snug twin bed frame, so he put his mattress on the floor and then dragged mine down with it. It filled up all the space in the room, but at least his feet could hang off the end instead of ramming his head and crushing his feet against the head and foot boards, respectively. Mind, the end of the bed was directly underneath Alex's crib, so he had to be careful not to kick upwards, but he could at least stretch out.
9:30 am today. A full hour after the office opens. I finally get ahold of somebody who works in the apartment office. I'm told a crew has been working on it for awhile and it's a building-wide problem. Fine. I spend the rest of the day at my parent's house where I have not only a working toilet, but a working shower. I take a shower, Alex takes a bath, we play and hang around until 5 pm when I call (for the umpteenth time) and find out that yes the problem has now been fixed and the whole building can resume normal plumbing once again.
It's 5:30 pm when I get home. The apartment stinks like a drainage ditch in the middle of summer. I open the window the whole foot it will open. I close the bedroom door. I light a vanilla scented candle. I make Alex sit on the couch and turn on a Scooby-Doo movie for her. She sits and watches it while I assess the damage in the kitchen. No damage. Everything's fine. I then go back to the bathroom, the source of the stentch. The toilet is fine again. True to their word, the drainage problem is solved. However, the bathtub is covered in even more slimey black gunk only now half of is dried and caked on. It's covered up the edges and over the side. The bathroom floor is covered in black mess... it looked almost like black moss was growing over the floor, only it reeked and I knew better. Luckily it didn't make it out to the carpet, but apparently the bathtub backed up worse and eventually it overflowed, either sometime last night after we left or during the day while I resided comfortably with a working toilet. The worst part? On the floor, also covered in black gunk, are three pairs of Jeff's boxers... now soggy and discoloured. What could all this black mess be, you ask?
Sewage. Raw sewage. It was raw sewage that jammed up the drains. It was raw sewage that the drains spit out into the apartment, and it was raw sewage that now covered my bathroom and stunk up my apartment. I put on my grimey old shoes that I was going to toss anyway, grab a mop and my heavy duty cleaner, and make my way back to the bathroom. Alex is still sitting on the couch watching Scooby-Doo. She's enthrawled. I know I won't have to worry about her. It takes a soaking and about twice as much cleaner as it takes to remove paint, but I was able to scrub the sewage out of the bathtub. I had to mop (yes, I actually mopped the bathtub... hey, don't knock it, it worked) the darn thing a few times, but it's clean. I filled the sink with soapy water and soaked Jeff's three pair of boxers while I scrubbed the bathtub. I then refilled the bathtub and used that water to mop the floor. I had to go over it three times before everything was up and cleaned. Filled the tub up for the third time and hand washed Jeff's boxers. The floormat was so messed I didn't even bother and just trashed it. It was cheap and old and falling apart anyway. But Jeff's boxers quickly made the water black and slimey so I drained the tub, rinsed the tub, and filled it again. Yes, that's 4 times. I get Jeff's boxers clean and it only took two soaping/scrubbing/rinsing cycles.
I'm done. The bathroom is now clean, there is no raw sewage anywhere, and the smell is quickly fading from the apartment. Scooby-Doo is over. Alex has come to investigate what Mommy was doing. We come back to the living room where I look at the clock. It's now 7 pm. Took me an hour and a half to clean that tiny little itty bitty bathroom (and I mean itty bitty... the sink and counter are lining one wall, the toilet is directly next to it so you can't open the cabinets all the way, the tub is next to the toilet with no space in between, and the door only opens all the way if nobody is on the toilet and anybody inside are standing in the shower). I get the mail, Jeff gets home, I go to WalMart and buy a new backpack (mine busted this morning, and I use it as a purse/diaperbag) and get some sandwiches for dinner as I'm not about to cook at home, not after spending so much time cleaning RAW SEWAGE out of my bathroom. I feel dirty, but right now, I think taking a shower might make me feel worse (though the bathtub is cleaner than it's ever been).
Why am I livid, you ask? Well, let me tell you. Sunday Jeff, Alex, and I spent a lovely afternoon buying the last parts for Jeff's new computer, replacing my watch battery, and buying a movie (Snatch, for anyone interested... I love it and have wanted it for ever so long... found it for $10 too, woohoo!). We ate a lovely dinner with his parents and delighted in the renewed/saved/no-longer-in-trouble marriage of his sister and her nice husband. We come home, I put Alex to bed. I go to use the bathroom as I've had rather a lot to drink and have an exceptionally full bladder. The water in the toilet is below-level. This is a bad sign. I don't use the toilet but instead flush it to see if it's plugged up somewhere. The water doesn't drain and instead fills up the bowl. Stops just below the rim. Yay. I pull the shower curtain back so I can find the plunger (it's rather ugly and hides in the corner behind the shower curtain) to try and unclog whatever is gunking up the drain. I get a quick glimpse of the tub and immediately forget about the toilet. The bathtub is lined, bottom and halfway up the sides, with black slimey mess. What that means, ladies and gentlemen, is that drains were blocked and overflowed into the only places they could go... into bathtubs, sinks, and toilets. I call Jeff in. He assess the situation. A little water from the tap in the bathtub proves to be a bad idea. It's doesn't go down the drain. The sink runs mostly okay, as does the kitchen sink, and there is no water on the floor which means nothing overflowed while we were gone, just backed up. This is good.
We called the emergency maintanence crew, as not having a toilet to use is considered an emergency. After 15 minutes I'm so desperate for a pee that I get in the car and drive to the nearest available public toilet (which happened to be in a gas station). It's the nastiest public toilet I think I've ever been in, but it worked and I returned home. We wait two hours and they never show up. So we call my parents. I get Alex up, Jeff and I pack a change of clothes and immediate necessities and spend the night at my parent's house. The guest room is currently undergoing a major cleaning so we couldn't stay there. That left the two twin beds (used to be my bunk beds) in Alex's room, so that's where Jeff and I slept. Only Jeff is too tall to fit into a snug twin bed frame, so he put his mattress on the floor and then dragged mine down with it. It filled up all the space in the room, but at least his feet could hang off the end instead of ramming his head and crushing his feet against the head and foot boards, respectively. Mind, the end of the bed was directly underneath Alex's crib, so he had to be careful not to kick upwards, but he could at least stretch out.
9:30 am today. A full hour after the office opens. I finally get ahold of somebody who works in the apartment office. I'm told a crew has been working on it for awhile and it's a building-wide problem. Fine. I spend the rest of the day at my parent's house where I have not only a working toilet, but a working shower. I take a shower, Alex takes a bath, we play and hang around until 5 pm when I call (for the umpteenth time) and find out that yes the problem has now been fixed and the whole building can resume normal plumbing once again.
It's 5:30 pm when I get home. The apartment stinks like a drainage ditch in the middle of summer. I open the window the whole foot it will open. I close the bedroom door. I light a vanilla scented candle. I make Alex sit on the couch and turn on a Scooby-Doo movie for her. She sits and watches it while I assess the damage in the kitchen. No damage. Everything's fine. I then go back to the bathroom, the source of the stentch. The toilet is fine again. True to their word, the drainage problem is solved. However, the bathtub is covered in even more slimey black gunk only now half of is dried and caked on. It's covered up the edges and over the side. The bathroom floor is covered in black mess... it looked almost like black moss was growing over the floor, only it reeked and I knew better. Luckily it didn't make it out to the carpet, but apparently the bathtub backed up worse and eventually it overflowed, either sometime last night after we left or during the day while I resided comfortably with a working toilet. The worst part? On the floor, also covered in black gunk, are three pairs of Jeff's boxers... now soggy and discoloured. What could all this black mess be, you ask?
Sewage. Raw sewage. It was raw sewage that jammed up the drains. It was raw sewage that the drains spit out into the apartment, and it was raw sewage that now covered my bathroom and stunk up my apartment. I put on my grimey old shoes that I was going to toss anyway, grab a mop and my heavy duty cleaner, and make my way back to the bathroom. Alex is still sitting on the couch watching Scooby-Doo. She's enthrawled. I know I won't have to worry about her. It takes a soaking and about twice as much cleaner as it takes to remove paint, but I was able to scrub the sewage out of the bathtub. I had to mop (yes, I actually mopped the bathtub... hey, don't knock it, it worked) the darn thing a few times, but it's clean. I filled the sink with soapy water and soaked Jeff's three pair of boxers while I scrubbed the bathtub. I then refilled the bathtub and used that water to mop the floor. I had to go over it three times before everything was up and cleaned. Filled the tub up for the third time and hand washed Jeff's boxers. The floormat was so messed I didn't even bother and just trashed it. It was cheap and old and falling apart anyway. But Jeff's boxers quickly made the water black and slimey so I drained the tub, rinsed the tub, and filled it again. Yes, that's 4 times. I get Jeff's boxers clean and it only took two soaping/scrubbing/rinsing cycles.
I'm done. The bathroom is now clean, there is no raw sewage anywhere, and the smell is quickly fading from the apartment. Scooby-Doo is over. Alex has come to investigate what Mommy was doing. We come back to the living room where I look at the clock. It's now 7 pm. Took me an hour and a half to clean that tiny little itty bitty bathroom (and I mean itty bitty... the sink and counter are lining one wall, the toilet is directly next to it so you can't open the cabinets all the way, the tub is next to the toilet with no space in between, and the door only opens all the way if nobody is on the toilet and anybody inside are standing in the shower). I get the mail, Jeff gets home, I go to WalMart and buy a new backpack (mine busted this morning, and I use it as a purse/diaperbag) and get some sandwiches for dinner as I'm not about to cook at home, not after spending so much time cleaning RAW SEWAGE out of my bathroom. I feel dirty, but right now, I think taking a shower might make me feel worse (though the bathtub is cleaner than it's ever been).
