Steph's Rockin Band o' Blogs

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

My house becomes a roadside rest stop

Yesterday I witnessed something that will take years of deep, primal therapy to erase from my tormented brain. Maybe never.
First let me state that you are reading about a girl who, due to some quirky, weird phobia (I have others, too) will travel an entire 12-hour journey in the car without stopping at a bathroom. If something happens where I HAVE to stop, (and NUMBER ONE ONLY! Dear God!)I will take a deep breath, (and not inhale again until I am safely back outside), squint my eyes as not to see anything unpleasant, and kick the door in, a la Sidney in Alias, as not to touch anything. I will then accomplish the task as quickly as possible, all the while a pain-like grimace on my face.
And on an airplane? Forget it. My teeth would float in my head before I would use one of those holes in the sky.
Yep...I like the yellow, warm, cozy, nest-like bathroom in my house. Like a cat, I have marked that as my territory.
But now, my yellow, warm, cozy, nest-like bathroom has been defiled.
Here it is. Yesterday, we had windows installed. I'm thinking, "Cool! Windows! No big deal, I'll go about my day." WRONG. From 8am on, a herd of clomping, dirty, loud, cattle-like men in huge puffy suits that looked like the Feds' when they were chasing "ET" invaded my home. It was 20 degrees out, and frigid blasts ripped through my house all day as they, of course, cut huge holes in the walls. (Well, the holes were already there, but you get my gist.) The noise! The dirt! The mud! But all this was child's play until I heard the first toilet flush at 8:20.
I was at my laptop (I was forced downstairs all day, as the herd of men were upstairs installing all the bedroom windows until 1:30) and my ears perked up alertly, adrenalin beginning to surge, fight-or-fight kicking in: Was that a flush? Yes. It was.
Several flushes followed in the next hour, but since I was tuned into what was going on, I was a BIT mollified when I realized they were Number Ones, because I would mentally time the span between the door shutting and the flush. And the potty breaks were all under a minute or two. So I breathed a bit easier, but was still disgusted. I mean, people. Can't you hold your water for a couple hours? Are we babies with no control?
And then... at 11:30.... I heard ANOTHER flush.
And then, I cocked my head, doglike, when I heard a sound that followed the flush. Was it?....Could it be...?
It was.
THE FAN WAS ON.
A surge of vomit moved up into my throat as I closed my eyes and ears against the horror. No, the large Grizzly Adams window-installer did NOT do what I was thinking in my bathroom. Drop the kids off at the pool, liberate the chocolate hostages, you know the terms. I managed to get up from my desk in the dining room and make my way to the foot of the stairs and look up. Yep..at the top of the stairs, a firmly closed bathroom door with the fan whirling away behind it. You know what a closed door signifies, don't you, friends?? When the person who has just been in there has left and the fan is on? Yes. It's the equivalent of a skull-and-crossbones flag.

Sickened, I wandered into the kitchen where I had cut myself some cheese (not unlike the fellow upstairs) and crackers. My stomach soured and I turned away. (I have discovered a new diet, I think. I just need to have someone poop in my house and I'll be a freakin rail.)
The next hours were spent in a haze of trauma, calling everyone I knew about what had happened, and emailing long, wailing descriptions of the hell I was going through. (One friend asked me, when he checked in an hour later, "So, has anyone asked you for a beer and the remote yet?")
At 1:30, the gang moved downstairs, and I was finally free to go upstairs and FINALLY get dressed, put my contacts in, etc etc. Fearfully, I opened the bathroom door, and surveyed the damage. It LOOKED normal. But underneath...like a disease....something evil lurked.
I had to pee myself by then, so I gritted my teeth and lifted the lid, praying that all was well in Tidy Bowl land. But, 'twas not to be. Being kind, I will spare you the details of what my poor, horrified eyes saw, but let's just say...The bathroom-pillaging gent had left me a present. At this sight, I believe actual tears sprang to my eyes. I quickly dressed, numb and shellshocked, and bolted from the house. I drove aimlessly and distractedly, heading in the general vicinity of WalMart. (As I drove, I was conflicted: I wanted to be out of that house, but now that I was gone, I feared that what was happening in my absence and NOT being able to keep accurate records of the time-between-flushes, fan-or-no-fan, etc., was just as bad. I visualized the gaggle of merry men shrieking "Yeee-haaaw....she's gone!" as I drove off, and going hog-wild, doing their business freely in all of my bathrooms.)
There was one thing I could do.
I picked up my cell phone and dialed Action Maids, saying, "Hi. Can you get someone out to my house tomorrow?"
"Ummmm, let's see. We're pretty booked up...how about next week?"
"Well, you see, I had some workers in my house, and...they used my bathroom." (I felt the need to explain my urgency.)
There was a silence, then... "OOOoooohhhhhh."
I waited through another pause, then the voice said: "We'll have someone out there tomorrow at 10am."
So, in a few moments, when Action Maids arrives with their arsenal of mops and Comet, I will be able to say like in Poltergeist: "This house is cleeeann." My potty will be restored to a virginlike state, and the memory, in time, will fade. But you better believe that I'll be sending A__E___C__ Windows the bill.
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