I was brushing my teeth (as I do habitually, because I love me some minty freshness) and somehow knocked the cap of the toothpaste into the toilet, which was in the process of flushing.
First of all, euw’ I wasn’t about to stick my hand in there while the boom boom was rushing around, so in some questionable bit of logic, I decided to wait until it had finished flushing and then would fish out the cap and throw it away. It was the cap from the Aquafresh Extreme Clean toothpaste, which is not your normal little toothpaste cap, but rather a gigantic space age cap, so never in my wildest dreams did I expect the thing to go right down the pipe and simply vanish. I mean, there are some situations where ones own expulsion (indeed, the very thing the toilet was designed to assassinate) doesn’t quite make it down after a full flush, why would something that is extremely buoyant and very large somehow get sucked down in a waning flush? It doesn’t make sense. It’s crazy toilet logic!
The next few times that I used the bathroom, like a criminal revisiting the scene of the crime. I flushed it with some hesitancy, fully expecting the toilet to back up dramatically, and yet, nothing. Nothing. Have I gotten away unscathed? Can’t be. If there is one thing I have learned about home ownership it is that everything you do or don’t do will cause a ripple effect that will cost you four times the amount of originally estimated money and time, and usually, there will be casualties.
But now I have quite a bit of trepidation every time I use the bathroom. I know that it’s totally going to backfire in some horrible projectile flush that leaves me traumatized for years. The neighbors will talk about the Fateful Flush of Ought Four for years to come. I just know it.
I have not told Esteban about this yet. Mostly because if he wins the Toilet Flush Lottery, I can pretend as though it’s an act of God and then hand him a roll of paper tolls.
All’s fair in love and war, baby.
This morning, I was driving into work, listening to a new mix CD that I cobbled together in the last minutes before I was leaving (because the new Sting CD, which I actually and legally purchased over the weekend sort of leaves me feeling unsatisfied and wanting, like an aural version of a Snackwell’s cookie, because man, you just totally bought a CD and now you feel like you need another CD or maybe five, you know?) and apparently, I was channeling my 18-year-old self, because it is entirely comprised of The Cure, The Church, The Pixies, The Sundays, The Pet Shop Boys, and The REM. And I usually have my CD changer set to play random, so I got in and immediately am treated to The Cure’s ‘Prayers for Rain’ (off their definitive Disintegration album’ if you only own one Cure CD, it should be that one) which is about four hundred minutes long and also features Sounds of Nature ‘Rain’ effects from the Candles And Other Shitty Gifts aisle at Target. If you planted ‘Prayers For Rain’ in some nice loose soil and watered it, a Hot Topic would sprout from that spot.
Then, the next song was ‘Charlotte Sometimes’ and that was when I noticed that even though I was sipping on my Sbux Venti Rocket Fuel ‘ and driving about 75 miles on the freeway in major morning rush hour traffic, instead of Road Rage, I had Road Ennui. I wanted it to rain. I wanted fog.
I quickly flipped to the radio, in which the DJ made the four millionth lameass joke about how his partner was going bald and then they queued up a Hillary Duff song, so I narrowly escaped driving to somewhere lonely, maybe a cemetery or an abandoned house then wearing Chucks and plaid and perhaps a crinoline with black torn tights and drink hot tea and wear black-rimmed glasses and confessing my deepest dark secrets to a gay boy best friend.
Needless to say, it was a damned close call.
The comments section wants to know your top 10 essential albums.
