Tag Archives: water

Overflow

I was downstairs the other day when I heard this rumbling sound coming from the second floor. As I hopped up the stairs, the sound got louder, and when I made it up, there was a puddle of water growing outward from the bathroom door. I opened the door and the toilet was overflowing. I don’t know how or why it started to overflow right then and there, because I hadn’t used that toilet in a while, but this train of thought only lasted for five seconds, tops, because the more I stood around and thought about it, the more gross toilet water was making its way out of the toilet and into the rest of the house.

My first instinct was to grab the plunger and get right to work, which, with the toilet bowl already filled to the brim with toilet water, with the water cascading down the sides of the bowl, only made things splash around. I tried to position myself standing on my tiptoes, as if I could somehow get to work here without getting wet, but as soon as I started plunging, up and down, there were these mini tidal waves making direct contact with the front of my pants.

It wasn’t working. And that’s when I thought to turn the water off at the source, something I should have done immediately. But I only let myself contemplate my missteps for another second, second and a half, because I was standing there and my shoes were getting wet. I had to bend down to reach for the knob behind the base of the toilet, and I was really afraid that some of the toilet water was going to splash on my face, which somehow it did.

Once the water was off, the sound of rushing water went away, which gave me the false sense that my problem had been solved. This feeling of comfort didn’t last very long, as I realized that I had a huge mess on my hands. My brain was looking for some sort of quick action. Or, if not an immediate fix, at least an immediate plan, something that I could get to work on right away, a series of steps that, once executed, would make my problem go away. But I didn’t know where to start. And the growing pool of water that was escaping the bathroom made its way to the edge of the staircase, so I could hear the water start to trickle down in those little lines of very rapid drops.

There was a towel hanging next to the shower, and without really thinking it out, I just grabbed it and threw it to the ground. But the water was so much that it immediately overwhelmed my puny effort. The towel soaked through, and it hadn’t made any noticeable dent in the water level. And now what was I supposed to do with the towel? I couldn’t pick it up and put it anywhere, it would just drip all over the place. If anything, I’d only added to the mess.

I thought about paper towels, but no, I had to go down to the basement and find a mop. And then I had to mop everything up with a bucket until it was all clean. It took like two hours, total. I was just sitting there, I had other things on my mind besides mopping the floors, and then all of the sudden the toilet went bonkers and totally hijacked my day.

And just as I was going over the floors with a soapy solution, I heard the same rumbling sound coming from downstairs. I went to run, like a real life game of human whack-a-mole, to turn that water off before there was another giant mess to clean up, but the floors were still slippery from me having just mopped everything up, and so I wiped out, my feet flying out forward, the back of my head hitting the lip of the top step before my entire body slid.

And I would’ve fallen the entire flight, but right as my head made contact, my left arm instinctively shot up and grabbed on to the railing. So I was stable for a second, but only a second. With the wind knocked out of me due to the hit to my head, I started panicking, concentrating all of my strength toward my left hand on the railing. It must have been too much weight for the piece of wood bolted to the wall, because something popped out, a piece of hardware, I couldn’t be sure, and when that gave way, that’s when I fell down the rest of the stairs.

My bottom tooth had punctured the inside of my lower lip, and as I opened my eyes after realizing that I wasn’t seriously injured, I felt the dual sensation of the warm blood filling my mouth as well as a coolness at the back of my head. It was a puddle. It was coming from the bathroom. I don’t know how it got to me so quick, or maybe I’d been knocked out for a little while when my body tumbled to the ground floor.

Then there was a loud popping sound, like a burst, like a mini explosion. It was the upstairs bathroom. I definitely turned the water off, but there must have been some sort of pressure behind it, because now there was a strong current of rushing water pouring out of the bathroom, down the stairs. I was getting soaked from above and below. And I tried to twist my body into an upright position, but everything hurt pretty badly, and so I let myself just kind of sit there, the water accumulating under my head, now maybe half an inch deep.

And then I heard the doorknob turn, I realized too late that I was unfortunately positioned right by the front door. I tried to scream out, “Wait!” but she must not have heard me over all of that running water, and when the door opened, it opened right to my head, another slam. Right before I blacked out again, I could hear my wife, screaming, she was just like, “Jesus Christ, Rob, what the fuck?”

I could be bigger than Jesus

Lately, whenever I think about Jesus Christ, I can’t help but take note of the fact that I’m about the same age that he was when he started getting really big. Do I think I’m going to overthrow an empire and start a chain of events that will shape world affairs two thousand years from now? Probably not. But it’s possible. And just knowing that it’s within the realm of possibility makes me feel like my life can’t be that bad, that it’s not too late to really make something out of myself.

And besides, I have so much more going on for me than Jesus did. Like, Jesus didn’t have the Internet. I’m sure turning water into wine was really impressive at the time, but if I found myself in his situation today, first, I’d go up to the host of that wedding, I’d be like, “Come on dude, who throws a wedding and doesn’t buy enough booze?”

And then I’d take out my phone and say, “SIRI, tell me where the nearest liquor store is.” Right? In fact, if I were at that wedding two thousand years ago, not only would I not have been impressed at Christ’s little miracle there, but I’d be worried. “Hey Jesus,” I’d say, “you know we’re living in an age where potable water isn’t exactly a luxury. Maybe two thousand years from now some of the world’s luckier inhabitants will be able to easily draw drinking water from metal pipes conveniently located throughout their houses, but that’s not the case here.”

In fact, I’d venture to guess that most of the people that attended that wedding died. They got blackout drunk on miracle wine and they all woke up the next day totally dehydrated, I’m talking roaring hangovers. Which wouldn’t have been a problem if twenty-something instant gratification JC maybe thought out his actions further than just the present moment.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he probably tried to reassure everybody, “just get me some of that leftover wine and I’ll turn it back into water.” And everybody was like, “Are you serious? It’s all gone. You drank most of it. Don’t you remember tying those two wineskins to your hands, insisting that nobody cut them loose until you drank both of them?”

All I’m saying is, history is written by the winners. Or, in this case, by the survivors. Notice that not once during the rest of the entire New Testament does Jesus dare turn anything else into wine. In fact, I think that there’s enough evidence later on that this early miracle actually held him back.

Because what about that time that he multiplied the fishes and loaves to feed all of those people? Again, what was wrong with people back then? You’re going to travel far away from home to the middle of nowhere to see an ultra-popular rabbi on his tour of the Holy Land, and you’re not going to bring food? You’re just going to stand around and wait to starve to death?

My point is, Jesus gave them food, great, bread, fish, delicious. But what about something to drink? “My Lord,” they probably begged him, “everyone’s complaining that, while the food is delicious, they can’t seem to find any water or wine to wash it all down.” And Jesus was probably like, “I … I can’t. I can’t perform miracles on water and wine. I made a promise. Never again!”

I’m just saying, Jesus was a big deal. But until he showed up when he was something like thirty years old, he was a relative unknown. And then he showed up and it was like, “Who is this guy?” just like Barack Obama did, “Yes we can!” Just like me, just like I can, maybe. I’ve got to come up with something, but the important thing is, there’s still time. I still have a chance to change history forever. Who’s with me?

I should just find the sprinkler

The other day I was outside in my backyard watering the plants. I have a sprinkler somewhere, but there’s this really stubborn and lazy resistance preventing me from digging it out and setting it up. My day-to-day routine would be a lot easier, which isn’t to say that I’m out there every day. But I’m at least thinking about it, as I waste time surfing the Internet, or rush to get ready so I’m no more than five minutes late to work. There’s always that nagging feeling in the back of my mind, dude, you have to water the plants.

Sometimes I’ll get a pretty good rhythm going, something almost resembling a routine. Maybe a stretch of three or four days will pass when I’m actually doing it somewhat regularly, I’m outside, I’m watering the garden. But then maybe it’ll rain and I’ll get the day off. And then the next day I’ll say to myself, well, it rained a lot yesterday, so I’m sure the ground is still wet. And then the day after that, I can see from my window that the soil is visibly dry, but going outside and doing something about it, man, I haven’t done that in three days now. I’m comfortable, settled in to a new routine of not going outside at all.

But more often than not I’m at least trying to take care of my tomatoes and lettuce, and so every other day or so, every three days, max, I head outside and turn on the hose. It’s an exercise not only in the responsibility of daily chores, but also one of patience and standing still.

Some days it’s easier than others. I’ll get lost in the moment, I’ll enjoy being outside, it won’t really feel like a chore at all. But then a lot of the time I’m antsy. All of that resistance that I was talking about earlier, just because I manage to make it outside doesn’t mean that I’m not still drawn back into the house, I can feel it, my chair, the computer, the Internet, they’re all beckoning me to put down the hose and resume my endless wasting of time.

I was out there and I’d been at the hose for maybe a minute, a minute and a half. Everything about being outside was bothering me. I’d been neglecting the lawn for a while now. Everything was starting to get really overgrown and wild. It was the first really, really hot day of the year, and so I was having a very minor freak-out about the passage of time, how I swear it was just winter, like I close my eyes and I can see myself shivering in the cold, closing my eyes in my mind and saying to myself, what the hell, I thought it was just summer. And I feel momentarily overwhelmed, like my whole life is just this blur, I’m trapped on carousel that’s going just a little too fast and I can never really get a good focus on the outside world for more than a second or two.

But even this micro-panic, at least it was occupying my mind. While I stood there and contemplated how in no time at all my life would be over, the hose was going, a minute turned into two minutes, at least something was getting done. But just as I was starting to settle into a standing-still routine, I was jerked abruptly back into the present.

What happened? It was my right leg. All of the sudden it was on fire. I looked down and, I must have accidentally parked my foot directly on top of an anthill, because below the ankle, it was covered in tiny ants. I freaked out, started swatting and scratching at my leg. I turned the hose on myself, and then at the anthill. I wasn’t thinking at all, it was just a pure reaction.

And then I started stomping around, because as I tried to shake all of the little insects from my foot, I realized that there were too many, that for every one that I squished against my skin, there were another two or three crawling out from the many crevasses inside my sneaker, in between the spaces of the fabric that made up my socks.

I retreated back inside and I could feel the itching for the rest of the day. Even when I went to bed later that night, they were there, little phantom ants desperately trying to grab my attention, doing anything in their power to get me to take just one more step. I briefly felt a little guilty for blasting their entire habitat with my hose, but I can’t get down on myself for that. That’s human instinct, that’s how we evolved to be the dominant species on this planet, by lashing out and immediately destroying anything that poses even an imaginary threat to our piece of mind, or lack thereof.

I really should go out there and clean everything up. The hose is still lying there, the plants could use another drink. But I can just see it now, me, I won’t be able to stay still, certainly not long enough to use the hose to saturate the ground. I’ll be too busy hopping around, swatting at thousands of potentially real insect bites. I should just look for that sprinkler. I know it’s around here somewhere.

There’s something in the water

“There’s something in the water,” she told me from the kitchen.

I couldn’t even get myself to think of anything to say back, but part of my brain in charge of basic communication must have been running on autopilot. I heard a “Huh, really?” come out of my mouth, but I shouldn’t have engaged at all. Now I was a part of this little back and forth. Before it was just noise. But now … I don’t know.

I hoped that my mumbled response telegraphed exactly what I was thinking, look, I’m not interested, OK, I don’t care if the toilet is making a sound, because I don’t hear it, OK, I could get up, I could fiddle with the handle, I mean, do you want me to take the top off of the tank? Because I could do that. Sure, I could stop watching TV right now and check out the toilet again, you know, because I have so much training in fixing toilets.

What’s that? You don’t think the refrigerator is cold enough? OK, well, let me just poke around and pretend to play with a bunch of knobs inside. There, is it colder? No? Well, let’s just give it a minute to kick in, OK? How does that sound, does that sound like maybe that could be a plan? Maybe? We’ll just wait a little bit. And to be perfectly honest, all right, I’m a little skeptical of your ability to tell the temperature of the inside of a refrigerator just by opening the door. Look, I don’t want to get into it again, but are you taking into account how warm it is inside the house? Because I don’t know, it just feels like a fridge to me, like a regular fridge.

“Honey,” it’s a conversation now. This is something that I’m going to have to be actually dealing with.

“Huh, really?” OK, that was probably a little mean, that wasn’t on autopilot, but now I felt a little bad, making her think that I was on autopilot. If it worked though, I’d feel bad still, but if that’s as far as that conversation went, well, I’d at least be able to finish this show, I wouldn’t have to put it on pause, really give her all of my attention.

“There’s something in the water.”

There’s something in the water. Can you take a look at the oven? When did I sign up for all of this handyman work? I don’t have any technical training. And she knows it, too, she knows that I don’t know how to fix anything. I mean, sure, I can hang up a towel rack, right, that’s fine. A drill, a screwdriver, I don’t want to make it sound like I’m completely helpless here, I know how to use your basic toolkit. But machinery? What is our oven, gas? Do we have gas? Or is it oil? I’m just … I’m not really capable of dealing with stuff heavier than your average hammer-and-nails very basic work around the house.

“Babe, can we just call somebody? I mean, I don’t know how to do any of this stuff. Can we just like have someone come and take a look? A professional?”

I started to feel a little bad, although that should have done it, that should have ended the dialogue for a little bit, now I’d have to sit here and feel bad, I’d go right back to my show, but I’d feel her staring at me, like why shouldn’t she be able to ask me for some help? I mean, I’d be thinking, I guess I could just get up and check it out. Even though all I had wanted to do was just sit down for like thirty minutes, just an hour really, and even though I was direct, right, communication, you’ve got to be direct, even though I made it clear that I wasn’t ready to deal with this stuff, now I’d be sitting there, of course I’d get up, I’d feel bad about the quiet, about that look, like, why can’t he just get up?

“There’s something in the water.”

But it wasn’t over, and so I wasn’t done either, this wasn’t done, at least I wouldn’t have to feel bad.

“Fine, I’m up. OK. I’m up. What is it?”

“There’s something in the water.”

And she was just standing there, she looked totally vacant, she wasn’t looking at me, she was still looking at where I was sitting, even though I wasn’t sitting anymore. I was up. I was right here.

Her arm, it was covered in … it wasn’t water. It was liquid. Was it liquid? It looked wet. It was black. I grabbed her arm and leaned my face in to look, to smell, what was it, was it some sort of an oil? A grease? No, it was moving. It was liquid, yeah, but there were all of these tiny black … things. Like machines, but really small. Almost like little tiny robot bugs. That doesn’t make sense, I know.

But they were going up her arm. And on her fingertips. They were eating the skin. I could tell, it was only at the tips, but these things were eating her fucking skin. Holy fucking shit. I could see bone.

Motherfucker I could see her bones. And they were spreading, upward, up her shirt.

Fuck, Jesus Christ, they were on my hand now too, right where I was touching her. They were on me.

“What the fuck is this? They won’t come off? Can you get them off? You tried to get them off?”

She wasn’t responding. She wasn’t looking at me. She said it again.

“There’s something in the water.”

I had a dream where a red comet fell into the ocean and turned all of the earth’s water into red Kool-Aid

I had this dream the other night where a giant comet fell to the earth from space. It was gigantic, twice the size of the one that killed all the dinosaurs. And by the time NASA figured out that this thing was on its crash course, it was too late to do anything.

“But don’t worry,” the lead scientist tried to reassure the public, “because luckily, this thing is set to land right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, really far away from any of the continents. Maybe some small islands might be impacted, but if we get them on planes right away, I think they’ll be safe.”

This was all at a huge NASA press conference, and some reporter raised her hand, “Really? You think there’s enough time to ferry all Pacific Islanders to safety?” and the scientist really shouldn’t have spoken so soon, his expertise was astrophysics, not aviation, and yeah, now that he thought about it, that probably was a logistical impossibility.

“Uh, you know, I don’t think there’s going to be any real danger with those islanders,” he kind of lied, wishing they had had enough money in the budget for a PR spokesman, someone who could have done all of the reassuring, the translating all of the technical science to everyday English.

The comet fell from the sky, it was much bigger than even the scientists had anticipated. It was all caught on camera, a giant ball of red fire splashing down right in the middle of the ocean. There was a big dip, an audible gulping sound, and then the water started getting red.

It was a slow change at first, like from the orbital cameras pointing at the crash site, you could see the red seeping outward, but it wasn’t until months later that the extent of the red became too much to ignore. It was the entire Pacific, it was turning crimson, and it continued to spread to all of the other oceans, to the rivers and lakes and ice caps, everything red.

And someone eventually tasted it, and the rumors came back that it had the exact same flavor as red Kool-Aid. Nobody believed it at first, but sure enough, it was like right out of the pitcher, red Kool-Aid.

“You see,” the scientist explained at the follow up press conference, “the chemical composition of that comet was precisely enough to not only add red Kool-Aid color and flavor to our planet’s waters, but there were also foreign agents that, when combined with ocean water, had the effect of negating out all of that gross oceany stuff.”

Maybe he didn’t say gross oceany stuff, but all of that science jargon, I couldn’t remember it word for word. Surprisingly, nothing really changed, like in terms of the marine ecosystem, you would have thought that the plants and animals used to living in seawater would have died pretty quickly after having their habitats turned sweet red, but they loved it.

Still, the governments and scientists couldn’t leave well enough alone. They insisted on pouring money into research and development geared at turning the water back to its regular blue. And it took like fifteen years, but finally one of them invented a really powerful bomb that, when submerged deep enough back in the Pacific, it was going to turn the red Kool-Aid into blue Kool-Aid.

“Close enough,” was the consensus. And everything was great for a little while, until another comet came crashing through the sky, landing almost in the same exact spot. I’m not going to bore you with the details, but scientists later figured out that this second comet would have turned the ocean into one of those trick Kool-Aids, like one of the ones that changes colors and flavors halfway through. I think they called it the Great Bluedini or something like that.

Anyway, it was only supposed to work because the ocean was red originally. But scientists had to go ahead and get in the way, making it blue, and the Bluedini comet had nothing to work with. So instead of changing the color of the water, it changed the color of all of the marine life, all of the plants and animals. But this time they all got very sick, like really sick, they all died and floated to the top and the earth’s waters were forever sick and polluted.

And we couldn’t drink regular water because there was no regular water. The change in the evaporation cycle was complete. Now when it rained, it rained blue Kool-Aid, and when we cried we cried blue Kool-Aid tears. And cried we did, that we had to get involved in nature’s plan, that if we had just left things alone, the space lords would have changed it back from red to blue via that second comet, but we had to be big-shot know-it-alls and ruin everything, and now all the fish were dead, and nothing was ever going to be OK ever again.