So, there was a moment in time last week where I thought to myself, "I should write a blog post with this somewhat entertaining story." Then, on Friday night, another incident blew that story right out of the water.
Friday started normally enough. Headed to work. Got bored at work. Desired great weekend funtimes. Was irritated by failing coordination and flaky people. I had one desire: to do something fun that evening. Didn't matter what it was, just as long as it was fun. I had planned to meet my visiting brother and his friend at a beer garden, but they informed me it was a bust. We then decided to meet back at my apartment to conceive further plans.
As I was waiting for them to arrive, I received another call: "Let's just cook at your place." I agreed this was perfectly reasonable and suggested a run to the local Safeway, but they said they would just grab some ingredients on the way back. This is where fate intervened.
There happens to be, a few blocks from my home, a cheese shop. I've never been inside, but it seems like a place you need to visit. So, my brother visited. They bought several types of cheese, some noodles, milk, and some wine. When they arrived home, I was informed we'd be eating macaroni and cheese. This sounded quite pleasant to me, so I helped cook.
Now, when you live in a temporary home, and you never eat there, you tend not to have basic cooking ingredients either. It occurred to me that we had no flour -- a key ingredient for making the roux that causes the cheese sauce to thicken properly -- but we, for some reason, decided to proceed anyway.
The first attempt resulted in a butter, milk, and wine terror sauce. Apparently, when you mix wine and dairy, you have to do it in a particular way -- lest your milk curdle on you. The second attempt seemed to be going ok, so we added the cheese. It was unclear whether the cheese would incorporate or not with the rest of the sauce. There were moments of hope, when it seemed to be mixing, intertwined with moments of despair, thinking this food would not become edible. In the end, the cheese sauce was a bust. The cheese, although melted, would not incorporate with the buttery liquid that also inhabited the pan.
We let it be for a bit while we looked up places to get delivery from, and, once it seemed we were back on track to food, I decided to clean up the kitchen.
Now, we had a large pan full of liquid-y cheese-y hellishness. My first thought was to drain of the liquidy part and trash the cheese, but this seemed like a very difficult task. My next thought was "garbage disposal," but I don't trust our kitchen sink. Not only did we have to baking-soda-and-vinegar the shit out of it a few weeks ago because there was a terrible odor emanating from it, but I also have to run the garbage disposal any time I pour out a pot, bottle, or pitcher of water -- lest it take five years to drain. So I'll say it again, I don't trust my kitchen sink.
Now the next part is one of some contention. My roommate believes I am a crazy person for even thinking to do this, but, especially growing up in a house without a garbage disposal where it was -- not common, but still not unusual practice -- I stand by my decision to flush the cheese sauce.
Even my brother's friend concurrently suggested flushing the sauce when I thought to do so. So, I walked in the bathroom, poured the sauce in the toilet, and flushed.
That was the lapse in judgment -- that one moment between starting to pour and the flush. It should have occurred to me that if I didn't trust the sauce in the garbage disposal, I shouldn't have trusted it in the toilet. It should of occurred to me as I was pouring this "sauce" into the toilet, that this wouldn't work. But it didn't. See the problem was a disconnect -- cheese sauce would probably flush just fine, but this was no ordinary cheese sauce. This was the cheese sauce devil, with pure buttery liquid concealing a large mass of pliable cheese under the surface. Even with this type of culinary fail, it's possible the sauce would have flushed, just not in such a large volume.
As soon as I flushed, it was obvious to me what a mistake I had made. When the water abruptly stopped, my first instinct was to do no more until a suitable solution could be properly thought through, but I panicked. I yelled to my brother and his friend that the cheese would not flush. My brother joined my in the bathroom attempting to flush again, but to no avail. I became hysterical. How could this happen? How do you get cheese stuck in your toilet? How does this happen?
The first step was, of course, to plunge, but we did not have a plunger. Hardware stores aren't usually open on Friday nights, either. I decided to head down to the Safeway -- open 24 hours -- to get a plunger. I couldn't stop laughing to myself on the walk there. I plugged my toilet with cheese. A solid mass of cheese. I swear this is something only I could do.
Equally fun was the half mile walk back with the one plunger Safeway carried in hand. The plunger actually came as a threaded dowel and the rubber bottom, so I kept thinking I should be using the bottom as a hat and the dowel as a cane for a dance number as I was walking up the street because I swore this situation couldn't get any more ridiculous than it already was. But there was no time; I had to get home to try to fix this before my roommate got home.
Did I mention my roommate was gone through this whole ordeal? I had sent her two texts. One when the cheese sauce failed: "Our kitchen is full of fail right now...." And one immediately after the cheese got flushed: "Oh my god. The horror. THE HORROR!"
Being at dinner with her mother, apparently she had neglected to check her phone at all before arriving home, with a serious need to pee.
Meanwhile, I'm power-walking up the nearly vertical (and when I say "nearly vertical" here, I really mean "nearly vertical") hill that we try to avoid at all costs that leads up to one end of our street. My roommate calls me, now in hysterics: "What did you do?! I have to pee!" I tell her that I'm close, but she needs to go knock on a neighbor's door because I'm fairly convinced that A) plunging is not going to work at all and B) even if it does, it's going to take a while. She seems to disagree, so she waits the next minute while I walk, exhausted, back into the house. At this point, my brain is beyond any functional place. There's cheese in our toilet. It's Friday night. I just wanted to do something fun tonight. Anything fun tonight, but instead I have cheese-toilet.
My roommate remains for a minute or two of the initial plunging, then runs off to knock on neighbors doors to find a working toilet. After much toil, it's apparent the poor-quality Safeway plunger isn't going to do anything. Some of the overflowing cheese-water has to be scooped out into the bathtub. Our bathroom... is a nightmare. All I keep thinking is how this is so much worse than my JetBlue horror story (ask me sometime, if you've never heard it). I'm still in panic-mode, so I text our downstairs neighbor -- who's not there -- to see if he has a plunger or snake, or knows someone we can borrow from. He responds, and I go down there to find he has the same terrible plunger I just purchased. After a tiny bottle of Southern Comfort and a long slump on my bed, I text him again, asking if he has extra keys and "can we use your bathroom until we get a plumber?" He obliges, and I am the most relieved I've been in some time.
We finally get around to ordering some pizza to eat, and call several plumbers. The rates are mostly outrageous, with the only reasonable company tied up fixing a water main for the city. Since we have a key to the toilet downstairs though, we decide to let it wait.
My roommate is still upset -- and rightfully so -- because our bathroom is disgustingly cheese-y. She wants to shower, but the tub has been a channel to drain cheese-water. So I grab a bottle of basil dish soap from under the kitchen sink and clean my best.
On Saturday, we finally get a plumber out, who snakes the toilet. Within five minutes, our toilet is functional again. We pay the man -- who, uhhhh, might've allowed us to pay less under the table -- and are glad to have things back to normal.
Our bathroom is still a little greasy, but damn, I can handle that for now.
