I barely know how to tell this story. It will need a lot of background information to explain how a fifteen-minute disaster went down.
To begin, you should know that the plumbing in our house is old. You should also know that because of this, often when Lloyd does his business (sorry, Lloyd, but it’s crucial to the story), there is a clog. You should also know that I am the one to discover this clog each time, because I use the toilet and the water level rises to the top. I grumble and complain, plunge the toilet, then yell at Lloyd.
You should also know that one of the therapies for my dry eye is to use a heat mask. It goes in the microwave for 20 seconds and then I wear it for ten minutes. It loosens up the oil glands. It’s effective, but sometimes I forget to do it.
Ok, here goes. On the way upstairs Monday night, Lloyd asked if I had done the mask. I said I was too tired and that I needed to get ready for bed. He insisted that I should use it upstairs, despite my arguments that by the time I would lie down, the thing would be cold. He nuked it anyway, and I put it on and proceeded to get ready in the bathroom – blindfolded.
I was so proud of myself. I got into my jammies (blindfolded!), brushed my teeth (blindfolded!), went to the bathroom (blindfolded!), flushed….. and heard the wrong sounds. I was irritated. I opened the door – blindfolded – and scolded Lloyd. “It happened again. You need to come and plunge this toilet.” “Now?” he asked from under the covers. “Yes.”
He came into the bathroom and said, “Oh, dear.” I took off my blindfold and …… oh dear. The water had not stopped at the top of the toilet like usual. It was running over the top and there was a flood on the floor.
DANG IT!!!
He asked if he should get a mop and I said, “Yes!” (I was not thinking clearly. Wasted time. Wrong tool. Wasted effort.)
I turned off the water and threw a bunch of towels on the floor. I worked on plunging and then realized that was not the priority. I soaked up the water in my area and then looked where Lloyd was. I can’t see anything without my glasses but I realized that the water was ALL OVER. He was trying to mop it up with a tiny sponge mop. Good grief. We wrung out towels and kept mopping, plunged the toilet, then cleaned. It was SO MUCH WATER. It was a disaster, but it was kind of funny since it was so bad.
He took the towels to the laundry and I went down to survey the damage to the downstairs bathroom.
Rats. I forgot some backstory. You should also know that when checking for batbugs, I would check inside the light fixtures. Those little buggers crawl along the electrical lines and I had found them in other lights. I couldn’t get the glass dome off the fixture without the whole thing moving around, so I left it alone. I just knew that I’d break it.
Back to the flood. I went in the bathroom and along an old ceiling crack (where water has leaked before), water was definitely leaking….. and that glass dome had an inch and a half of water it.
Lloyd climbed up on a stool and started to turn the dome, and I yelled at him to stop. Here’s the part of the story where it is less funny and more screamy, since I was trying to explain to him how the whole thing was stuck and now that water was involved, we might actually burn the house down in a non-litigious manner.
We got it off, and now need to leave notes for Future Us: The downstairs bathroom light fixture doesn’t unscrew, it just needs to be turned 90 degrees so that the glass tabs can come out of the collar spaces.
Anyway, it was a crazy, sitcom-y whirlwind, then Lloyd went right back to sleep and I was awake for the next hour and a half.
Good times.