I bet it's in the credits

I am unfortunately several weeks behind in posting about my recent endeavors. My apologies. My reasons are two-fold: 1) I was on vacation (Read: I was busy. Reality: I was lazy) and 2) I've been struck down by a crippling back injury (wait, there's nothing funny about that... moving on...)

Since it's very un-like me to leave a story untold because it's "so last week", I'll tell you a tale about something that happened on my vacation. To clarify, my vacation wasn't a traditional vacation; I wasn't anywhere tropical, I simply wasn't at work.

I started my vacation on a Wednesday (how very ramdon of me). I was set to volunteer at my best friend's work picnic. And so I did. We were supposed to go camping right after that and stay there for four nights and five days. As per usual, circumstance reared it's ugly head and our camping expedition was cut short. I arrived home on a Saturday night, one night earlier than expected.

I spent the first while reveling in the luxuries of home: hot showers, cold drinking water and comfy chairs. Also, the internet. I was sitting at my computer minding my own business.

I live in a basement suite and the upstairs people are very loud, so I pretty much hear everything they do. This day was no exception. I heard someone go into the bathroom and draw a bath. Roughly 15 minutes later, I heard them let out the bath water and start draining it. But then I heard this noise that was really loud but I continued on my merry way.

But then I started hearing what sounded like water dripping and hitting some sort of surface. If the upstairs guy was a "shower after having a bath" kind of guy, I would know. He's not. Besides, it would take awhile for the bath water to drain in order for me to hear the water hitting the tub. And then I realized, this noise, it's really loud. What IS that?!

I got up from my chair and cautiously peaked around the corner and looked in my bathroom.

When I wasn't ambushed by the water monster, I ventured further in and found this:

My sink overflowing and no sign of the water coming out of the faucet. In fact, it appeared to be coming up and out of the drain. Up? Water doesn't flow up, what's going on? I freaked out.

I had a brief lapse from the panic and recalled a conversation I had with my landlord when I first moved in (four years ago!). He brought me into the storage room and showed me this switch and said "If anything ever goes wrong with the water, this valve shuts it off for the whole house" and then he showed me how to use it. I ran into the storage room, but by the time I got there, was in full-blown panic mode again and couldn't figure out how to operate the switch.

I decided as a compromise, I would turn off the water going to my sink. Not at all logical since I was already aware that it was not coming out of my faucet, but then again, panic often over-rides logic, doesn't it? I crawled under the sink and turned off the water. For some reason, the water was still freely flowing up and out of my sink.

GEORGE! He lives where my landlord used to live and is clearly the person equipped to help me. I dashed out of my suite and around to the front of the house. I knew before I even reached the door that George wasn't home, yet I rang the doorbell and proceeded to bounce around on the stoop like a kid waiting for the candy store to open. It didn't.

I ran back to my place to call my landlord, but I couldn't find my cell phone (and thus, his phone number) anywhere. Crap! I eventually found my phone and called him. Meanwhile, water is still pouring out of my sink. I tried to sound nonchalant, as if I always call my landlord on Saturday nights. He wasn't buying it. I explained my problem and he said he was on his way.

While I waited, I thought it would be a good idea to stem the flow of water and try to keep it contained to the bathroom. As I'm laying down towels I hear the upstairs shower turn on. I turned and watched the sink with horror written all over my face. Again, water started pouring out of my sink. Nnnnnnnooooooooo!!!!!!

I ran up to the front of the house and knocked on the upstairs people's door. "Can you turn the water off?!?!??! My place is flooding!!!!!". Although, I'm sure I was much less coherent than that. In the end, the shower got turned off and I ran back downstairs to continue monitoring the situation.

Upstairs guy came down into the storage room to see how bad it was. As we were talking I hear the water turn on. I cut him off mid-sentence with "OH NNOOOOO!!!!!!". I can only assume I had a look of terror on my face because he immediately looked concerned "What's wrong?!?!" "THE WATER!!!!!! NNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!" I bolted out of the bathroom, grabbed a bowl, came back and started bailing water out of the sink (and secretly wished I'd thought of that tactic earlier). All the while, he's yelling upstairs:

Him: HONEY! Turn off the water!!

Her: What?

Him: Turn off the water!!!

Her: Okay.

(water still running)

Him: HONEY! Turn off the water!!

Her: Sorry!

(water still running)

Him: HONEY! Turn off the water!! We're flooding down here!!!

Her: Sorry!

(water still running)

Seriously. He ended up having to run upstairs to tell her to turn the water off. "Sorry - I forgot!" She's not exactly the most considerate person in the world. So, finally she stops using water, my landlord showed up with a wet-vac and started cleaning up the mess.

He knew what the problem was but couldn't fix it until the morning. In the meantime, do not use the water in the bathroom. I nodded in agreement, the upstairs people looked horrified.

Them: No showers!?!?!?

Landlord: No showers.

Them: But we have a big day tomorrow we need to shower.

Landlord: Well you both just bathed so shower when you get home.

They continued to make a big production about it. My landlord and I just rolled our eyes. Once they left, my landlord turns to me and says "You know when a grown fucking man will only have baths that there's some major fucking issues going on. I mean, what grown man only has baths?!?!!?" My response "I dunno... the same one who gets mad that he can't have a bath in 12 hours when he just finished having one?"

The next day he came over to snake my drain. When he'd been there a whopping 15 minutes, upstairs lady comes down to see how it's going (and to see if she can have a shower). Get over it! Once he actually got the drain snaked, he pulled out this giant mass of black hair. Upstairs lady came downstairs again to see how it was going. He took one look at her long flowing black hair and said "What the fuck are you doing up there? Giving yourself a fucking haircut?".

Needless to say he was quite annoyed at them and their shenanigans. But it does make me feel better that someone who doesn't even live here is more annoyed at them than me. That just might warrant it's own post.

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing the illustrations!