E.coli, E.coli everywhere...

Okay, so we're in the middle of a giant (for us) house project. We're moving the washer and dryer out of the kitchen and into the little room above our stairs on the second floor. Second-floor laundry is everyone's secret fantasy and it will soon be our reality. Oh, yes!

Our house has been a total sty for a few weeks because a plumber pal is doing this job as a side job (thus the ongoing nature) and the plumbing is coming up through the only two closets of consequence in the whole house and so the contents of the closets have been flung hither and yon. This has been trying for my spirit. I'm nothing even close to a neat freak, but I do have a problem with ongoing chaos. I was okay for a while, but now it's getting to me, for real.

Now, for some background:

When we first bought this house, we ripped out all the carpeting and the linoleum under the carpeting. As you may recall, there was carpet, pad and linoleum even in the bathroom. In several rooms, there were two layers of carpet and then two more layers of linoleum. As I've said before, I fucking hate everyone who ever owned our home, both as a group and as individuals. You know that I'm a lover and not a fighter, and yet I would be happy to punch every one of those motherfuckers in the face, dead or alive. That is the level of my fury.

(Aside: According to Froofy von Doofy, at a certain point, anything that's wrong with your house is your own fault. I am not sure I'm at that point yet. We're on the second major house project our budget allows, and we just keep uncovering former owners' bullshit.)

One thing we discovered upon pulling up the carpet, pad and linoleum in the bathroom is that there were water stains on the wood floor. We could see no evidence of current water leaks, and so we assumed that it was from times past and had the floor sanded and refinished. Great! There's still some staining, but it's not as obscene.

Now, this past Sunday, our plumber pal busted into the drain pipe in the basement to connect everything up proper from our laundry room. I'm telling you, this was a huge job. He estimated it would take 8-10 hours total and it's taken 17 so far. Fucking nuts. Yes, he's very nearly done. In fact, we're so close we could taste it. Still.

So he was here last night putting some finishing touches on the basement action when he feels drips of water on his arm. He wonders where it's coming from and sees that it's coming from the shaft up through the middle of the house that harbors all major water and sewer piping. Awesome.

As he's shining a light up into the shaft, I, not knowing what was going on, went to the bathroom and flushed the toilet. And there was a splash in the basement.

Oh, yes!

Naturally, he shouted for us. We all ended up looking into the shaft and it looks like there's been an extremely slow leak in our toilet pipe area for basically ever. There's all kinds of madness up there. He suspects that when he was busting into the pipe on Sunday that he loosened things up and it turned into more of a trickle than a slow leak. He suspected our toilet seal might be to blame. As I continued to stare up into the shaft, a big drip of water and god knows what rained upon me or, to be more precise, upon my face. That's when I started to gag.

We immediately stopped using the toilet. While I was out on my walk for serenity, I used the toilet at Friendly's.

At this point, it was nearly dark time, so we had no choice but to send Scott to the Home Despot for a new wax ring. There was a bit of drama in that when they pulled the toilet off the floor, there was all kinds of bogusness. Our plumber pal said, "Listen, there's a serious chance that we might not be able to get this toilet back tonight." There was a serious rust and grossness situation. Holy hell.

We made an action plan: if we couldn't resolve this, we were going to camp out at Margaret and Jeremy's.

By the power of Grayskull (and a whole lot of near-hyperventilation from nerves), our plumber pal was able to rig it back up so that the leaking ended and we were able to sleep in our own bed. But this rigging might not hold, friends. This rigging includes pieces of wood wedged into the space between the toilet and the floor. It looks like a crack house in our bathroom!

We were planning to replace the toilet as part of the ongoing house project, and so it seems we will be doing this sooner rather than later. While our toilet isn't the source of the problem this minute (it's actually the flange and the pipe directly underneath the toilet), if we're going to fix all that up proper, it's a fine time to get a new toilet that doesn't empty the resevoir with every flush (we've become an if-it's-yellow-let-it-mellow family -- plus we keep a couple bricks in the tank to reduce the water usage, but still!).

I started doing some online toilet research and stumbled upon a story in Mother Earth News that linked to a PDF of best-toilet research. It's stunning. Anyone in the market for a toilet that wants to know how to get the most efficient bang for the buck will find this 100% useful. Anyone else interested in how independent toilet rating companies rate toilets will be fascinated. I highly recommend that you at least look at the photos of the toilet-testing laboratory and how they make the fake poop that they test flush. Awesome.

All this to say that the strange moisture problem in the basement is now explained. Also, that our bathroom has moved up the priority scale. I will not let it derail the kitchen project. I will not.

The new washer and dryer are being delivered on Wednesday. Once the plumbing inspector gives us the all-clear, we'll be in good shape. Once we pick out our new toilet and have it installed, we'll be golden. I'm considering this one.

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Did you know your content is being rebroadcast on this site?

I'm really confused about how this is allowed.

Also, I'm kind of steamed about it. I wrote a note to the "editor" and am going to patiently await an answer while steaming quietly.

Know what I mean?

Back in my old blog, I wrote a cranky piece a couple years ago about how my sister hangs up the phone by saying, "Loveyoubye" and it drove (and drives) me crazy because the "I love you" part, to me, becomes a sort of wallpaper that you don't even notice. It's a part of a greeting and not a meaningful, heartfelt utterance. I'm of the notion that those are the kinds of things you save for when you really mean them, and you use them sparingly and not at every turn.

Anyway, I'm over that now and on to much more annoying patterns of speech. For example, the use of "Know what I mean?" at the end of every sentence.

Actually asking a person, "Do you know what I mean?" isn't the culprit here, but it's only not the culprit if you're actually checking in to make sure the other person understands something complex.

If you're saying, "Man, I need a snack - know what I mean?" That's when you get into hot water. It's the peppering of a normal conversation with a constant flow of "Know what I mean?" that's driving me to the demon liquor. It seems to me that people are using "Know what I mean?" as a time buyer, perhaps in place of, "Um."

For the record, I heartily endorse the use of, "Um."

The other thing that's been driving me up a fucking wall is when people say something, then say, "In other words," and then start saying it over again using slightly different phraseology.

For example, "I could really use a snack. In other words, I'm hungry."

I just want to scream, "I wasn't a moron when we started this conversation, and I didn't turn into one since we started talking! You don't have to break it down for me!"

Now here's the real problem: these things have bothered me so much, and even though they've bothered me, I've picked them up from the other more annoying people and now I'm afraid I can't stop using them.

Friends, I am the problem.