It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like My Eyes Are Frozen Shut

Well, we didn't get a huge snowstorm here last night. Not here in my town, that is. Just some regular old, run of the mill snow and ice. As you know, I spent the entire weekend indoors - I practically had to ask for directions to my parking spot this morning, so I didn't really get a feel for what the temperature was like outside. The radio tells me it was around 35 degrees above zero yesterday until 3pm (balmy!). Then the temperature dropped until it reached an overnight low of 7 below zero. The most exciting thing of note is that we're in a "Wind Chill Advisory" until 6:00 tonight, and they're forecasting wind chills between 25 below and 35 below zero. It's exciting for kids, that is, because some of the schools will be cancelled and many will be delayed. For us grownups, all it means is that we'd better not get a flat tire on the way home, or we're fucked.

It seems that I've broken our garbage disposal (seriously, I've been putting potato peels down there for my entire life with no problems until now), and we also have a clogged toilet. I can't find the plunger anywhere. I think when we moved from the old apartment across the hall, I threw out the old one and never bought a new one. I'm particular about spreading toilet germs from home to home. I throw away shower curtain liners and toilet brushes (ooh and bathroom floor rugs) also.

When I walked into the bathroom and saw toilet paper sitting in the bowl, with a suspiciously low water level, I sort of got an adrenaline rush. A minor one, granted, but still - it's like my endocrine system was all excited to be doing ANYTHING other than sleeping, it was all, "What've we got here, boys? Looks like a clogged toilet!! Should we try flushing it? NO WAIT! Must. Find. Plunger."

And then when I couldn't find a plunger, my endocrine system was all, "Must prevent others from flushing toilet! OVERFLOW WARNING! GERMS EVERYWHERE!" and I ran into the kitchen to make a note that says, "Don't Use" and taped it onto the toilet lid. Whew! Disaster averted.

Except that Gray came in and totally didn't buy the whole "the toilet is clogged" bit, so he's standing there looking in the bowl, and I'm yelling at him, "Don't flush it! We don't have a plunger! Don't you understand? If you flush it and we don't have a plunger, it will overflow!" He was like, "Why don't we just flush it and see if it goes down?" and I was like, "NO! You don't understand! What will we DO if it starts to overflow?"

So what did he do? He flushed it.

Now, the blogger in me really wishes I had a great ending to this story, something about how we ended up with turds in our shower, but the OCD germ freak in me is super glad that it just didn't work out that way. Gray flushed the toilet while I paced around the bedroom, covering my eyes with my hands, and the toilet paper didn't go down, but the water didn't come up. So...we're exactly back at square one, which is the square where our toilet is clogged and we don't have a plunger.

Of course later, I started to wash a load of dishes in the dishwasher, forgetting that the garbage disposal is broken and that it's somehow involved in the dishwasher's functions (I still don't understand that one). I happened to walk into the kitchen for something JUST as the kitchen sink started to overflow onto the floor. I just stood there and stared at it, like I was having a clogged toilet flashback, and then I cried frantically for Gray to come help me (he had just laid his sick little head down to sleep). He took one look and said, "Yeah, everyone knows you can't use the dishwasher when the garbage disposal is broken," all matter-of-fact, like he didn't just break every law of nature by flushing a clogged toilet with no plunger at the ready.

Wow, I made that all sound so very much more exciting than it actually was. You're welcome.