Confessions Of A Splenda Stealer

Life is odd in your 20’s. From one minute to the next, you can be dealing with serious adult things like paying bills and trying to fix a health insurance snafu, and the next, trying to deal with the ridiculousness that comes with being young, on your own, and not really knowing what the hell we are doing.

This morning was the latter.

I awoke to the the following text message from my roommie/bestie: I guess the handle inside the toilet tank broke. To flush, open the tank and grab the chain and pull up once. Make sure it stops running eventually after. I told Nick already. Call me if you need help.

Normally, I wouldn’t freak. As long as it flushes, there could be worse things. But the fact that I am hosting a St. Patrick’s day party tomorrow (it’s the 23rd annual Hoboken St. Patrick’s Parade when thousands of people flock to our mile square town for some debauchery), this is quite an unpleasant situation.

Due to the fact that our faucet has been leaking uncontrollably for the past few months and we do not have any hot water in the mornings even after calling our landlord, I’m trying to remain positive that it will be fixed by tomorrow, yet my sighs are filled of doubt.

Worst case scenario, I will move the party uptown to my co-hostess’ apt., where we are supposed to end up at the end of the day, but it will be a great annoyance because much food and booze are already at my place. If I put foil over the jello shot cups as I schlep them uptown, does that count as open container??

Only time will tell. Come on deli man–our nickname for our landlord, because he is also the owner of the deli that we blame for making our apartment smell like garlic and marinara on a daily basis. Thank God for my roommate, who made me laugh about the situation when I wanted to cry, with this awesome email:

Subject: OUR TOILET!!!

Hey Girlies – Sorry for the apartment-related email but I wanted to let you both know about our apparent toilet drama as soon as possible.

I woke this morning to find out toilet handle not working. Upon opening the tank of the toilet, it turns out the long stick thing that connects to the outer handle to the chain that pulls up the rubber thing that makes it flush, is severely rusted and has broken off. I told our friend, Nick the deli-man, and he said “ok.” I called again now (apparently Max said to call the deli directly to talk to Nick) and spoke to Nick’s brother who is going to tell him again that it needs to be fixed today and that our kitchen faucet is still leaking uncontrollably.

I propose that we each call once an hour, on the hour, to make sure it’s fixed by the time we return. Also, if need be, the toilet can be flushed by opening the top of the tank, rolling up your sleeve, and plunging your hand into the ice-cold water to quickly pull up the chain that connects to the rubber thing. Just make sure that the toilet stops running and the rubber thing falls back in place. My mom also said that we could throw a bucket of water into the actual bowl and that apparently shocks the toilet into emergency flush mode. But I think that method is scary and can get messy. Hopefully Nick the deli landlord will fix it by 5pm.