The Midnight Auger

So Pam has a secret. Actually, no. She doesn't anymore. No. She flushed it down the toilet. Yeah.

In the morning I had gotten up to begin my day of looking at less than satisfactory job ads. Stop in the bathroom on my way to the living room, when I had been setting up shop for the day with the Macbook. When I flushed, I thought "huh." I remember thinking the toilet flushed rather slowly when we first moved in. But this seemed extra slow. So I plunge and plunge (thankfully we have two because everyone needs at least two plungers). But nothing really helps.

That night Pam comes home from work [side note: I feel like such the housewife at home while Pam's bringing home the bacon] and when she walks in immediately sees two plungers sitting in the tub... and naturally bursts into a fit of laughter.

"I'm sorry if you had trouble with the toilet today," she says, meekly.

Point of information: If you ever happen knock your secret solid deodorant into the toilet, when you go to catch it would be best not to accidentally hit the flush mechanism because while it may seem like a toilet would not have enough sucking power to pull something that big and plastic down into the bowl... it does. It will.

This made apartment living interesting, given the natural things one has to do when living your life. The things that require a decent full working toilet, of course. It did work, though. All day everything seemed to go down. Eventually. With at least six or seven flushes. Sometimes 15 or 16. But it got down there.

At night, Pam goes to bed and shortly after I start feeling some stomach cramps. And more cramps. And then it's clear I need to go immediately.

Except this time is different. This time it doesn't go down, oh no. No, this time it keeps coming and the water (and other stuff I put into the water) begins to spill out over the toilet everywhere. This is about 11:35 and this was supposed to be the last thing I was going to do before crashing that night. But what could I do? It had to be cleaned up.

About 90 minutes later... after I have now disinfected the entire bathroom, I look online to find out how one might fix a toilet with a secret jammed in the toilet. Aside from actually detaching the bowl, the only suggestion was to get a really plunger that works (unlike our two crappy ones... so now we have three plungers), and to purchase a plumber's auger and snake a metal cord down into the toilet to loosen any snags down there.

Since you can find pretty much anything 24 hrs a day in this city, that's what I did. Over by 3rd or 2nd Ave I found a 24 hr hardware and purchased said auger.

The auger yielded mildly satisfactory results for about half a day before problems arose again. And I did want to have to run to Qdoba or Starbucks every time I had to go.

The Big V was called and eventually days later he arrive to pull the toilet off. Poor Pam had to listen to him swearing over and over and over. Thankfully I wasn't there. But for good reason... I was off getting meself a jobby.