Hello again, prospies. I was originally going to make this a commentary on roommates and explain my past post a little bit, but I feel I have a more urgent message this week:
Don't live in basement rooms.
If you read my past post you'll remember... none of it-- so let me remind you. My old basement room used to flood if it rained too much. In Portland. During the winter.
But that's ok. I just moved my stuff out of the wet spot and moved on.
Also, we had mice which would scurry around the basement. Sometimes, the other guy who lived down there with me woke up with a mouse on his face.
But that's ok. It was my roommate, not me.
A few weeks ago in my new house, we found mice again. They are inside the walls and we can expect sounds of scurrying and scraping at 2:00AM on the dot, every night.
But that's ok. It's nice to have consistency in my life.
This past Sunday someone or something clogged the toilet. As we were plunging it, I noticed that some sort of grey matter was oozing out of the shower...
Wait. Let's rewind for a second.
Just the day prior we were talking about the septic pump in our basement. It's actually located in a closet in my room. When enough water and waste goes into the temporary tank, the septic pump pumps the waste water up and away from my life in the basement. Septic Pump, prospies. In my closet. Read that again, slowly. Septic. Pump. SEPTIC.
Ok, back to the shower-moment.
I bolted back to my room and whipped open my closet. Boom-- farts. The smell of rank, wet, nasty farts seeped out of my closet. I immediately grabbed random stuff and started chucking it down the hallway. There was a small puddle of grey sludge at the bottom of my closet.
This is not ok.
The next day I'm up at 7:45am and ready to start hitting up plumbers. There are three that our landlord recommends. I call all three. No answer. I leave a message. 20 minutes go by and I call again. Nothing. 20 minutes-- call agian. In between calls, I'm searching Yelp for reviews of good plumbers in Portland and start calling them. I'm frantic. I'm the needy long-distance boyfriend who just heard my girl, Candy, has been "talking to other guys". I'm the college frat boy blitzing his way through the 6+ numbers he got this past weekend in a desperate attempt to get one to stick.
Three hours and a total of 27 calls later (no joke), I get someone who can see us at 3:00pm, and a day after that we have a new pump to replace the old one and negative $800.
So now my room is OK again. The smell of farts has simply been replaced by paranoia and bleach. Lots of bleach.
Here are some obligatory pictures I took after I had calmed down and we cleaned up the worst of the sludge (pre-bleach):
Don't live in basement rooms.
If you read my past post you'll remember... none of it-- so let me remind you. My old basement room used to flood if it rained too much. In Portland. During the winter.
A typical week in Portland
But that's ok. I just moved my stuff out of the wet spot and moved on.
Also, we had mice which would scurry around the basement. Sometimes, the other guy who lived down there with me woke up with a mouse on his face.
But that's ok. It was my roommate, not me.
A few weeks ago in my new house, we found mice again. They are inside the walls and we can expect sounds of scurrying and scraping at 2:00AM on the dot, every night.
But that's ok. It's nice to have consistency in my life.
This past Sunday someone or something clogged the toilet. As we were plunging it, I noticed that some sort of grey matter was oozing out of the shower...
Wait. Let's rewind for a second.
Just the day prior we were talking about the septic pump in our basement. It's actually located in a closet in my room. When enough water and waste goes into the temporary tank, the septic pump pumps the waste water up and away from my life in the basement. Septic Pump, prospies. In my closet. Read that again, slowly. Septic. Pump. SEPTIC.
Ok, back to the shower-moment.
I bolted back to my room and whipped open my closet. Boom-- farts. The smell of rank, wet, nasty farts seeped out of my closet. I immediately grabbed random stuff and started chucking it down the hallway. There was a small puddle of grey sludge at the bottom of my closet.
This is not ok.
The next day I'm up at 7:45am and ready to start hitting up plumbers. There are three that our landlord recommends. I call all three. No answer. I leave a message. 20 minutes go by and I call again. Nothing. 20 minutes-- call agian. In between calls, I'm searching Yelp for reviews of good plumbers in Portland and start calling them. I'm frantic. I'm the needy long-distance boyfriend who just heard my girl, Candy, has been "talking to other guys". I'm the college frat boy blitzing his way through the 6+ numbers he got this past weekend in a desperate attempt to get one to stick.
Three hours and a total of 27 calls later (no joke), I get someone who can see us at 3:00pm, and a day after that we have a new pump to replace the old one and negative $800.
So now my room is OK again. The smell of farts has simply been replaced by paranoia and bleach. Lots of bleach.
Here are some obligatory pictures I took after I had calmed down and we cleaned up the worst of the sludge (pre-bleach):
