I’ve had it with water. I’m up to my eyeballs in the stuff. A hot water pipe in my bathroom developed a leak last week. Not a horrible leak at the time, I was initially able to capture most of the runoff in a shallow bucket and bail it out every eight hours or so, but a leak that needed to be addressed before the situation became an emergency. I informed the building manager, who told me a plumber would be out on Thursday.

No plumber arrived on Thursday, but I was assured one would arrive on Friday. No plumber arrived on Friday. By Saturday afternoon, the leak began to become a minor emergency, and the pipe began to show signs of, well, not bursting exactly; but ready to start pouring water out at a rate faster than a bucket could catch in a half hour. I left a note in the building office, explaining the situation was prepared to become dire.

And then the rains came.

After being away from the apartment on Sunday night, I returned home to find a note taped on my door from a downstairs neighbor. Water was pouring through his roof. On top of this, I had left all my west facing windows wide open (my own dumb ass fault), so the entire western half of the apartment was flooded as well as the bathroom.

Luckily, no good furniture was damaged, but my dresser, as well as all the clothing inside the dresser, was completely water logged. I called the neighbor, explained to him the bathroom situation, mopped up the bathroom, mopped up the western half of my apartment, set fans to dry the carpets, gathered all the water logged clothing, and headed to the laundry room in the basement, where I found I had to traverse ten feet of foot deep water to reach the machines.

Hmmm. Risk electric shock or allow all of my clothes to become moldy? I opted for the possibility of electric shock, rolled up my pants, waded through brackish water filled with rat droppings and bird feathers and washed the clothes.

Yesterday, I headed to the building office first thing in the morning and found my building manager, who had just gotten off the phone with the plumbers, who told her they were back logged with too many emergencies due to all the flooding in the city with important people to bother with our sorry ass ghetto building, and that they would try to come out today.

Luckily, the hot water pipe in my bathroom has mostly clogged itself with rust and mineral deposits, as long I don’t try to use it. I tried to a bad ass and take a cold shower. That lasted for about four seconds, so I had to take buckets of hot water from the kitchen, and carry them across the apartment one by one to take a bath. I dunno, maybe a bath would feel slightly less emasculating if I was wearing cowboy boots, smoking a cigar, and having my back scrubbed by a nineteenth century Western saloon whore; but as it was, I felt like a four year old scrunched in my own filth while watching my junk bobble on the water’s surface. At one point, I dunked my head...

... AND NOW I HAVE SWIMMER’S EAR! My head is aching, I walking in circles, and bumping into walls because my right ear is filled with water I cannot get out (okay, I’m not actually walking into walls), my apartment stinks of wet carpet, I’m still bailing out the bathroom, there is no signs of plumbers, flooding is supposed to continue for the next few days, I doubt I’ll see a plumber until at least Thursday, and I can smell my armpits because baths are apparently bullshit.

Life is grand. I cannot wait to go to work tonight with my swimmer’s ear and stinky pits.