Because I know you are dying to know, our toilet saga continues, with a few new developments. Our landlord came over with the plumber last week, and this time, Craig was home—good because I can’t speak to the landlord just now. This is because she called me a few days ago to (a) ban me from painting green accents I had had my heart set on in the LD's alcove (interfering mightily with my nesting impulses), and (b) ask me whether I thought our friend who visited us last month had savaged the toilet during his stay. Okay, she didn’t say “savaged” but it was close. The call came in the middle of a work meeting, too. Cartoonish smoke spirals and swear words streamed out my ears, and it was all I could do to remain professional.
So I shut myself in my office when she came over with the plumber. Craig stood guard while they dismantled the toilet. After a few minutes, I heard some commotion—they had evidently found the source of the evils. Good, I thought—proof that there WAS something wrong with the GD pipes. The door to the office opened. Craig stepped in with a sort of sick, green expression on his face, and asked quietly, “Have you dropped a necklace down the toilet recently?”
As anyone who has ever been pregnant knows, there is a lot of peeing that goes on at night. A. Lot. Especially in the first trimester. You are peeing so often that when you rise in the morning, you feel like your night has been spent as much on the pot as much as in bed. So about four months ago, during pee #22, at about 4 a.m., I hardly blinked when I felt my chain and pendant slide off my neck, down my body, and into the dark abyss of the toilet water. Sitting there with no light on, tired as tired can be, it took me but a moment’s contemplation before I flushed the toilet and hoped for the best.
Was it wrong? It was. In my defense, it was the first trimester. Enough said.
I met Craig’s eyes and nodded. “Yes, I did drop a necklace down there. Have they found it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you recognize it as mine?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell them you recognized it?”
“No. If it had had a big K-I-L-E-Y pendant hanging off it, I wouldn’t have claimed it,” he said. “Not with the looks I was getting in there.”
He bravely made his way out of the office, back into the bathroom to thank the landlord and plumber for their mysterious discovery. They left with the necklace.
It is now five days later. The toilet makes more noise than ever.
Don't feel bad. your mother in law flushed a chicken skewer down the drain, 25 years ago which resulted in breaking up a concrete floor in order to effect repairs. She doesn't admit it either. Newman
Posted by: newman riggs | March 09, 2008 at 09:29 AM