No, Sadly, Not A Joke Part 1?

Prior to penning the first of these posts, I worried that I would run out of things to write about, that there wouldn't be enough amusing fodder to justify this entirely self-indulgent exercise. Now, I know, it's only been a week or so, leaving plenty of time for doldrums, but today is not that day. Today I went to the basement to go out to the garage and stepped in water.

Lots of water.

The kind of lots of water that can only be present on one's floor when something is horribly horribly wrong.

Now, my initial response was that devoted partner had spilled, say, one of the gallon containers of water that lives in the basement and "forgot" to clean it up. This is both uncharitable and not "unpossible." Since the first evidence of water was in his room, I looked for the telltale bottle source. Not finding that I worried that the laundry room which has a sink, a shower, and a toilet, was having some problems. After all, we hooked a dehumidifier up with a hose leading to the shower. And sure enough the shower was clogged and overflowing.

Not a happy camper was I.

I shut off the dehumidifier, cursing devoted partner, and called to curse him at work since the dehumidifier idea was his making this entire problem his. I left an irate and vaguely lucid message. I returned to the downstairs shower and stuck my (ick) hand down the shower drain to see if there was an obstruction. I came away with what felt like, yes, toilet paper. Very very wet toilet paper. I washed my hands, called my boss, and then, call waiting alerted me to devoted partner's call. I apologized for sounding like a lunatic, explained the problem, which he assured me he hadn't noticed (I remained skeptical in my uncharitable way), and hearing the obvious crazy in my voice, told me he was coming home to help. First we ascertained that the toilet downstairs had also exploded, so the water on the floor was, indeed, of the poo-infused variety. I got in the car, went to Home Depot (that's 5x since moving for those keeping score), and selected from the dizzying assortment of mops, buckets, and cleaning solutions.

Arriving home, I found devoted partner already in slop clothing with many theories. The first part of the grand theory was that it was my fault for taking a shower that morning. Let's put aside it was he who used the downstairs toilet last night. His suspicion was that we either had a clog or a septic problem (for those who know what this means, apparently the former is a cheap fix, the latter is most certainly not). He comforted me by reminding me that we don't own this house, so a septic problem, while both gross and expensive, wouldn't really be our problem, financially or emotionally. We emptied the laundry room of all items on the floor (thank god I treated this move like an adult and had already unpacked my cookbooks and kitchen gear), called the landlady and left a message, and called the nice guys at, I kid you not, RotoRooter.

They should arrive momentarily.