Pity Party Pooper

Hello, friends and neighbors. Well, well, well. Look who's back online. Yes, it's been a harrowing five days, but our long national nightmare is now over.

It all started Friday night when I noticed I had a distinct lack of connection to the internet. It went on for a couple of hours and I got antsy, so I decided to call the Comcast Bastards and they said, "Nope, we're not having an outage in your area. In fact, we're not having an outage on your street. It's you, my dear, you're all broken." Then they told me they could send someone right out to fix it, if you consider Tuesday "right out," which of course I didn't. Made no difference that I didn't, that was the day, and so I've been internetless for five days.

You have to understand a little of what this was like for me. Both Friday night and all day Saturday I was still full of infection and bee venom and I really didn't feel like doing much, and certainly didn't feel like going anywhere. When one doesn't want to go out and has already watched the home college football team play, it's frequent trips to the internet or, well, or coloring, which is what I did for hours on end Saturday.

I felt a little better, well, physically better, on Sunday, so I got out, headed to the office to post Sunday's blog (I haven't been fired yet for that), and had to make a little foray to WalMart because, as always happens at the worst of times, the hose leading from my toilet tank to the water cutoff had begun to leak. It was a task I truly did not want to deal with, but that's something you just don't ignore, especially when there's a towel under the spot that gets wet enough that you have to change to a new towel, which also gets wet enough to change.

So I did those things, bought those things, and came home. Since it was still light outside and therefore light inside, I decided to work a little on an idea I had for a Comfy Chair Cinema. That took a good three hours but went well, then I made a nice big salad, sat down to eat, took a little rest, and decided to get at the toilet task at hand.

It was about 8:00 by then.

Now, here's the thing about toilets. To do anything, be it changing toilet innards or simply changing outer hoses, one has to first drain the tank. The instructions for draining the tank are simple. Turn off the water at the cutoff and flush the toilet. The water drains out of the tank and does not return.

You really didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you?

Well, of course it's not that easy. Because even though flushing the toilet makes the water go out of the tank, not all of it goes out. There's about a half-inch still left at the bottom that doesn't drain out. It's too much to be sponged out, and it's not enough to be bailed out. This presents a conundrum, well, it did to me the first time I encountered it, and I went out and bought a cheap turkey baster that I used to suck out the remaining water. And that's what I did this time as well, after searching around for about 20 minutes trying to find the damn thing, and I began sucking, sucking, sucking, a baster-full at a time, and this takes about a half hour.

So, there I was. An empty toilet tank, a bloodstream full of bee infection, on my back with my head in the toilet, working at changing the hose. It took me about 20 more minutes to get the current hose disconnected. You know, I don't think of myself as a particularly strong person, but I must become superhuman when it comes to screwing on toilet accessories. I can never get them undone.

After cussing and screaming and swearing oaths that would make my mother disown me, I finally got the old hose disconnected, and started connecting the new one. Screw, screw, screw, bottom complete, screw, screw, screw, screw, screw, screw, top complete, because we all know the top end leading into the tank is much more frustrating to connect, because you also have to stick your head in the toilet to hold the big pole-like thingie in the toilet so it won't turn around in the tank and break.

The new hose was installed!

I turned on the water!

Water started spewing everywhere!

"Oh, shit," I said, as I do, and I immediately turned the water off. I turned it on again, gently, and found that the water was coming out between the connector and the hose. In other words, it wasn't that I didn't have it connected right, it wasn't that the cutoff had gone bad. I had a shitty hose on my hands.

And it was at that point I started to lose faith in both God and mankind.

I shut the water off again - and by the way, for anyone who's done this, isn't it interesting that the minute you drain your toilet tank is also the minute you begin needing to pee? - anyway, I shut off the water again and proceeded to drain the tank again, for it had filled during that last fiasco of a water turn-on.

And so I proceeded to drain the toilet again by flushing it, only of course it doesn't drain all the way and I had to spend a half hour with a turkey baster sucking water out. And then I tried to remove that hose, the bad one, thinking, "Listen, I'll put the old one on till tomorrow. I have to pee and I can't deal with it tonight."

Only I couldn't get the new bad hose off. And believe me, friends and blogees, I tried. I tried like you wouldn't believe. I heaved, I twisted, I assumed every position I could think of where I could grab both the hose and that tall thingie in the tank, and nothing was moving.

It was at that point I had a little bit of a nervous breakdown.

It was a bit of everything. It was the bee sting, the no internet, the low-grade fever I'd been running from the infection, the boredom, and my old standby, "Other women have people to do this for them." I started to cry, invoke saints, ask God why He hated me so. "If this is a test, I've failed it," I told Him. I really was at the end of my rope. (You know, normally, a day or two after the fact, I find these breakdowns rather funny. I still don't find this one funny. I was really in a bad way.)

Finally I gave up and walked around the house a little. Just walked, from room to room, crying and getting it out of my system. Then I went back, assumed the "on my back, one leg in the air, head under the toilet, right arm in the toilet tank, left arm on the new hose" position, took a deep breath, and decided I wasn't going to breathe again till I unloosened that hose. If I died, so be it.

Oddly enough, I didn't die, and I finally got the hose off the the tank. I put the old hose back on, and stuck a particularly large and thirsty towel underneath it. I gingerly turned the water back on, hoping for the best.

Now.

Now, I don't know about life, and fate, and the way the planets align and karma and all that. But the old leaking hose is still on my toilet and is as dry as the day I bought it. I have no idea what's going on, I have no idea if this was some joke the universe decided to play on me when it got bored, I know nothing. It may start leaking again tomorrow, and I might have to go through it all again. But the old hose is working.

And I told you all that to tell you this.

Even after it was all over with, and took two hours of my night, I was still a mess. I was just pissed at the world, feeling sorry for myself, wondering why in the world it's me that always ends up in these kind of situations.

I finally ambled off to bed, tucked myself in, and turned on the TV. There was a show on the History Channel I found quite by mistake. It was called "102 Minutes That Changed The World," and I have to tell you it was one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen in my life. It was certainly the best program I've seen on September 11, and I've seen more than a few.

It was basically real-time footage shot by normal people, no news footage at all, just people with camera phones, and cameras on the scene, and videos sticking out their apartment windows. It gave me a perspective of the day I've never had before. The footage was just amazing, and it's hard to describe, but I encourage all of you to seek it out.

Anyway, as I was there in my bed, all tucked in, it came to me. "I don't know why I had to go through what I did tonight, but I sure as hell know why I accidently found this TV show." Watching all that amazing footage it took me, oh, about 4 seconds to realize that "why me" crap is, well, it's crap, plain and simple, and I don't care if my internet goes out for five years and my toilet breaks down every day, compared to anyone involved in what happened on September 11, my life is a cakewalk.

I woke up Monday morning and headed back to work, where the day wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting. The weather turned cool and so I decided to gird my loins and hit the yard with the lawn mower when work was done. I did the front, both sides, bagged grass, then headed to the back yard.

Where I was promptly stung by a bee. In the left arm.

As I write this, it hurts, it itches like crazy, and it's hard for me to lift it above my head. My folks' bugperson came and looked at the yard today (as the internet was being restored) and found an underground bee terrorist headquarters. She put some kind of magic powder in there that's supposed to kill them all.

And I hope it does. I hope they die.

And so the universe is still bored and fucking around with me. But it's OK. I'm already on antibiotics for the last bee sting, so hopefully after the initial hurt and itch, I'll be back to normal. I'm glad mowing season is coming to a close, though.

I don't have any body parts left to sting.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Yes, with internet comes the ability to upload the latest Comfy Chair movie. Please hie yourself to the Comfy Chair Cinema and give it a look. It's called "A Moveable Feast," and it's, well, a moveable feast. Go here to view, if you dare.