DeToilet City

They say a picture's worth a thousand words, and I can honestly say 72 percent of them were probably expletives when I walked into my bathroom the other night and was greeted with the above...just awesome...sight.

A little back story:

Sometime in the first month of living in my apartment in Pittsburgh, I heard a weird "wubba-da-wubba-de-wubba" noise elsewhere in my apartment while I was in my room killing time on my computer. Trust me, you know the sound. It's the one that occurs when you shake a huge piece of poster board.

Intrigued (and perhaps terrified), I began my search of the apartment to find the source of the sound. Mind you I originally walked right past the bathroom in my search...but I've never claimed to be Mr. Perfect Hearing. My mom would credit herself for passing that trait along to me. I credit rock music at high volume...thanks, Nonpoint.

When I finally traced the ominous noise to the bathroom, I was lead directly to my toilet where I could only watch --in horror-- as soap was bubbling out of the toilet...slowly rising higher and higher. This is one of those moments where you feel like you should do something, at least if the soap level goes up another couple inches, and then the soap level *DOES* go up a couple of inches and you have the same "wait and see" thought all over again. I determined my best course of action was to just stare at the unfolding soapy event developing in front of my eyes and mutter, "Ummm...what?" over and over to myself.

Miraculously (do you believe in miracles?) the soap level eventually stopped rising, and the soap in the toilet dissolved into the bowl water. Disaster averted, sure, but now I was left with the thought, "Is this some kind of auto-bowl-cleaning method employed by my apartment renter?" If so...I mean...genius.

A week later it happened again. Once again the bowl didn't come close to overflowing, so I began to dismiss this event as nothing to worry about. I began to worry even less about this whole issue when it seemed to happen weekly, or even bi-weekly with no consequence. "Wubba-da-wubba-de-wubba" -- yep...there goes the toilet (yawn!).

Lost in all of this is my toilet began to have problems. I would classify these problems as general maintenance, parts-are-super-old problems. In the past month and a half I feel like I've had my renter in once a week replacing this part or that part to remedy the toilet continually running, not flushing properly, etc.

Well the other night the toilet started running again. My remedy for this is to jam a wooden spoon to keep to 'float ball' in the upright position and thus stop the continual flushing. Being the weekend I have to wait for the renter on Monday for an in depth look at the issue, so I just remove the spoon to flush, and stick it back a few minutes later to stop the process. Problem solved right?

Yeah...until the "wubba-da-wubba-de-wubba" goes down, your toilet isn't in normal working order, and you walk into a bubble bath on your bathroom floor. I'd say 90 percent of the mess was bubbles, and not water (thank God), but it was still 110 percent annoying. My two bathmats both got wet --not soaked, mind you-- but just wet enough to make you go, "Really? REALLY? ARGH!"

(Way too) long story short-- apparently this is indeed soap/water backup from when people are doing laundry upstairs. Someone must have had every washer going, and thus draining at the same time, to produce the result pictured at the beginning of this post. Apparently they are going to have to relocate my neighbor (who got overflowed as well...for the sixth time since he has lived here), drill into his tile floor and fix the pipes directly.

My only frustration in all of this is one of the previous times my renter was in my apartment fixing one of the minor issues with the toilet, I asked him about the "wubba-da-wubba-de-wubba" moments. He made a wise crack about it being an auto-bowl-cleaner, then in all seriousness discussed the pipe issue. He assured me it would never evolve into the issue.

Whoops-- 0-for-1, buddy.

And that's how you tell a story about a toilet. Hope you enjoyed.