This Too Shall Pass....

But maybe not down the toilet. 

You knew it was bound to happen. We haven't had one of these stories in a while. If you don't want to hear about toilets overflowing, profanity of the rankest kind and nakedness, then this post might not be for you.

You have been warned. 

HHBL and I recently visited the Sunshine state, where it is very sunny and very hot and very humid. It does SUCH lovely things for my hair. Just call me The Bride of Frankenstein. But this is not about my folically challenged head. We are actually here to celebrate Parental Unit Mimi's 80th birthday celebration (see prior post). But before traipsing to her abode HHBL and I spent several days visiting Pilot Man and The Chef, who also live in FL. We spent time hanging on the boat, hanging in the pool and doing 70 mph on the SeaDoo. I am not a person who likes to do 70 mph unless I am surrounded by a large metal vehicle. But this, this 70 mph on a vehicle that skims over the water without protection of any kind was more fun that anyone should legally have on a Saturday afternoon. 

But I have digressed a bit. 

Let's go back to that Sunday afternoon. The Indianapolis 500 was done. HHBL was taking a walk. The Chef was running some errands. Pilot Man was doing that thing that he does to earn bread for the table. And me? Well, I was floating like a big water bug in the pool. That is one of my favorite things to do, just float in a pool with my arms outstretched, sort of like William Holden after Gloria Swanson murdered him in Sunset Boulevard, only face up and not dead. I did that for a while and then I decided that I would finally take a shower.  I needed a nice hot shower. And I needed to wash my hair. I gathered up my supplies, wandered into the bathroom, turned on the shower to get the hot water going and turned to notice that there was some toilet paper that was floating at the top of the bowl. I decided to flush the toilet, which I proceeded to do, turning after that act and preparing to get into the shower. And that turned out to be a very bad idea, the whole, "That toilet paper offends me and I will make it go away" action caused a chain of events that did nothing to make my day better. I had the shower curtain pulled back and was about to step into the lovely stream of warm water, and I turned my head to the right, and....

That was when I noticed the waterfall and the river. You know how it is, when you see something that isn't supposed to be there, you pause for a nano second as your brain processes the fact that there is water pouring out from under the toilet lid and making a river on your sister-in-law's pristine floors.

Folks, let me paint a picture for you, I am naked as a jaybird, there is a river of toilet water that is making it's way across the floor and under furniture. And I cannot find any towels to staunch the flow. In fact, the first thing I tried to do, while all nakee, was try to get the dang toilet to stop vomiting up it's contents.

Well, really the first thing that I did was say,

OH SHIT!!!! OHSHITOHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT!!!!

Sorry, I used a series of bad words. It might happen again during this story. I make no promises.

After my little verbal out burst my little gray brain cells started to kick in. I got the water to stop, I wrapped a towel around my ampleness and then I went looking for other towels to sop up the water, hoping against hope that I could get this all cleaned up and the towels in the washer and my shower done and hair dried before anyone got back. A girl can dream can't she? It was a vain hope but still a hope. The problem was, this wasn't my house and I didn't know where any other towels were except for the HHBL's bath towel, which I used, the beach towel that I had used getting out of the pool, which I also threw down on the floor, and the towel wrapped around me, which I left in place so as not to scare the neighbors. 

That was not enough towels.

And then The Chef arrived home. Imagine the look on her face when I greeted her, in my towel, and explained that I needed more towels and a plunger. They just recently moved and evidently Pilot Man had divested them of many of the shop towels. And she didn't know where the other ones were or if they had even been unpacked yet. Also, the plunger wasn't where it was supposed to be. So she got me a bucket and I started sopping up water and squeezing out the water into a bucket, all while wearing my bath towel, with my hair slowly drying and becoming more Rosanna RosannaDanna like by the second. When I had the bucket partially filled I walked it out of the house, past the pool and dumped it in the bushes, all the time hoping that the neighbors next door or across the canal wouldn't see me and that I wouldn't have an epic wardrobe malfunction.

Finally The Chef found the "plumbers snake" and by that time HHBL was back. The floor was almost mopped up by that time and they started work on getting the toilet unplugged and.......

That produced and ever BIGGER tsunami of water that flowed out of the bowl, onto the floor, under the bathroom chest and started to make it's way out into the hall.

Oh ShitBalls indeed!

We hadn't found any miraculous pile of towels in the intervening moments, we just had the towels from the closet, the bath towel and the one beach towel so it was back to sopping up water, squeezing it into the bucket and hauling it outside. Over and over and over again.

On one of my trips out to the bush to dump water I encountered the young egret, "Little Bill" who shows up daily for a tasty morsel of turkey or salmon. He looked at my quizzically as if to ask where his snack was.

Not today kid!

And finally, after an HOUR of mopping up and squeezing out and some tension between HHBL and myself over a misunderstanding of words, and me standing around in my bathtowel, and a thorough cleaning of the toilet, the floor, the tub and any surface that had been touched by the water......

I was finally able to take a shower and do my hair.

I had a REALLY big glass of wine that night.