These days, it seems that there are two things over which I have no control, but am still very good at:
1) Winning books I don't particularly want in raffles and winning concert tickets that I may or may not actually want
2) Having things go horribly wrong with toilets
Of course, this post focuses on the later, because who really cares about the weird young adult book I won at an ASID event a couple of weeks ago. No, the fact that my toilet was out of commission for 18 hours or so is much more interesting.
I had decided that since I have been in my apartment for almost a year (exciting!), I should probably do some major cleaning in the kitchen and bathroom. Well, after vacuuming and mopping, it was clearly time to tackle the toilet, shower, sink, and shelves.
I had just put cleaner into the toilet bowl, and was removing my myriad hair products and perfumes from the shelf directly above, when my bottle of Bulgari Notte slipped right out of my fingers, the bitch. Since the toilet lid was up from cleaner application, the bottle hit the rim of the toilet and knocked nice big chunk out of it. The perfume bottle is fine -- not even a scratch, so at least that's good, right?
The now missing chunk meant that the toilet could not be flushed without turning my bathroom floor into a very shallow reflecting pool. I got the pool mopped up, and then went to speak to my landlords. Well, I spoke to their granddaughter first, because she can speak Italian, and I really can't. So my landlord came up, and he flushed the toilet, which reinstated the reflecting pool.
We got that mopped up, and then the landlord's son came over and confirmed that I would indeed need a new toilet because this one was pretty much useless. Fortunately he realized that it was all an accident and a really sucky situation. He went out and bought a new toilet, and then my landlord's son-in-law got it installed in two hours this morning. I was woken at the godawful hour of 9am for this happen, but it was definitely worth it.
Fortunately I was out and about last night, so I was able to make use of the facilities at various establishments. Clearly the various plumbing fiascoes in Farnham have served me well -- who knew that those life experiences would continue to serve me back in the real world.
