Poop happens.

If I haven't said so before, I will say it now: I live in a rundown shack of a house. From the outside, it is an adorably quaint little brick thing. The upstairs is just as quaint as the exterior makes it seem (complete with dining room and reading nook), but then you go downstairs and you realize that much like everything else this house's problems lie beneath its surface. And that's where I live, in the basement where all the problems live.

When Holly and I moved in, we really had no idea what sort of place it was. I had only seen the upstairs and Holly had yet to see the inside. She blindly (and somewhat foolishly) put her faith in me. We did not know that our kitchen was a converted washroom/boiler room complete with scummy concrete floor and exposed pipes and air ducts. Surprise! We also did not know that our house would be an oven in the summer and an ice box in the winter and that our bedroom had only just previously been seriously infested with spiders. Good times. (Fortunately, the character of our house is made up by an abundance of great roommates).

BUT, the best (and by that I mean the worst) part about the house is that the plumbing has issues. At least once a month during this semester, we have had to quarantine our bathroom. In the most bitter week of January, our bathtub and toilet backed up and were full to the brim with murky sewage water. Thus we had do our business at work or school and drive across town to Melissa's sister's house to shower. In February our toilet became severely clogged and we went another week without the conveniences of a toilet. March's problem is much the same, but is resulting in entirely different symptoms.

On Sunday morning, I walked out to the kitchen to poor myself a bowl of cereal and discovered (just in time) that a suspicious-looking puddle had formed around the drain that is in the center of our concrete floor. As we had to get ourselves to church and new that nothing was going to be done about it that day, we left the puddle where it was. By the time we got home, the puddle had made its way down the drain and we supposed that the crisis had been averted. HOWEVER, yesterday yielded new developments. After showering and doing a batch a laundry, I found that the puddle had returned but had brought a friend: a stinking layer of dark brown skode. In the evening the puddle had once again receded but made a major comeback after several showers had been taken. Our kitchen floor was invaded by a massive pool of yellowish water and its comrade, the skode. Last night's events made it impossible for other showers to be taken or the toilet to be used, thus I had to take my business to my friend Steve's apartment (thoroughly embarrassing). We've set up a barricade surrounding the offending area which means we are also kept from using our oven/stove and our sink/dishwasher. Oh, joy.

I suppose I have been spoiled by the modern conveniences of indoor plumbing, but after living in this house using an outhouse does not seem like a bad idea. Low maintenance is key.

May you flush without fear tonight,
KB