February 21, 2005
This is as if to tell you, you suck
Alright, alright, I hear you internet! It is time to update. Every day for the last week and a half or so I have heard and told about 8 billion funny, good internet potential stories. I have talked sex, I have cooked my brain out, I have laughed, yelled and cried. Have I told you about it? No, because I am a lazy slog.
There was a very amusing anecdote wherein my sister, H-star, told a story that involved burning her "cookie" the first time she used a bidet. I, myself, tried to convince her to use the word "coochie" because it is much funnier. However, she was having none of it. She was especially grossed out by my further suggestion of "taco". I mean, it kinda looks that way, doesn't it? You have to think hard taco, though, because soft taco is just too gross.
Here is a fact that came up that evening as well: Whenever you travel to another country, you will always come away with a poop story. Therefore, even though I already printed this, ahem, a couple of times, here is my olden and golden story about pooping in Argentina:. (that link will send you to the MUCH, much longer and definitely more boring story of my flight to Argentina and then my first night)
Had a great time talking (as much as was possible) to all the people and we stayed up pretty late. I got a chance to show them my laptop (showoff, I couldn’t even wait one day, I had even told myself that I wouldn’t bring it out about 20 minutes before) and pictures and it was a very pleasant evening. They showed me the room I would sleep in and the little bathroom just off of it. I was made to understand that the little bathroom was only for when the other was occupied and it was emergency status. One note about Argentina, and most likely any other South American country, no one EVER sleeps. Everyone in the house was up past midnight and I finally said I had to hit the hay.
One thing about flying, there are always people waiting in line for the bathrooms so it is kind of embarrassing to stink one up, plus I have performance anxiety, so it just isn’t even possible for me to, to, ummm, well, YOU KNOW. Then I was whisked right away onto the sightseeing journey and then another plane and THEN a house full of strangers, none of whom would go to bed. There was not a chance to go, as my friend Gareth said, “Oh lord, just say it..poo!” So I woke on Saturday at 6am having not gone, ummmm, you know, poo, for a good 2 days. Well, a small private bathroom that no one ever uses, early enough in the morning for it to clear up of smell, sounds like just the right kind of emergency for me. Afterwards I felt sooooooooooooooooooo much better. Until I went to flush. Hmmmmm, where the hell was the handle? For that matter where the hell was the tank? It was just a toilet connceted to the wall. I found several faucet handles, but upon further inspection none of them were for flushing. There was a hole in the wall above the toilet and I looked into it, hmmm the tank! Behind the wall and seems to be missing its lid. It looked like it had been made in 1899 but at least I was onmy way to a solution. However I haven’t ever flushed a toilet without the handle before and didn’t have a single clue as how to operate one. I kinda pushed and pulled at some wires. No go.
I see the foater thing that goes down when you flush the toilet (you know the thing that measures the water level and shuts the water off when the tank is full?) well I was exausted of other ideas so I pushed it down. Hard enough to make it stay down, not too hard though, remember this is an antique. Well it stayed down and the water in the tank turned on and no big surprise, the toilet didn’t flush. What brilliance! I mean, if I had been thinking about, I would have known that would happen. Who was thinking though?
So the toilet doesn’t flush and the tank is filling up, oh SHIT, literally. What to do now? I try to pull the floater thing up, to shut off the water, nope. Mess with a few of the wires and this has the exact same response as before, nothing. And now the water is starting to overflow!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh SHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT. What a great morning.
So I give in and go out into the living room. It is my one lucky break that Sergio just happened to be awake (didn’t I tell you these people never sleep?). So I asked him for help (actually upon reflection I realized that I said, “I need to help” but he got the idea). The first thing Sergio does is pull some little wire sticking out in the front that any sane person would have realized was the way to flush the toilet. Then he spends about 2 more cycles of flushing and filling getting the plunger thing to come back up. Apparently there used to be a full wall and a little button to push to flush the toilet, but it broke and they had to break into the wall, probably the reason few people used that bathroom. Anyway, I couldn’t have been MORE embarrassed, but Sergio was really really cool about it. I have the suspicion that he doesn’t realize that I shoved that plunger thing down, or maybe he does.