Woke up to a kind of flood. Stagnation. Water surrounding me, it seemed. FOrtunately my shower head has an on/off switch, where any time I use it I have to remind myself that up is off and down is on. That seems counterintuitive but I know there were meetings, spec sheets, discussions and usability tests before the probably-necessary-anyway design was approved by top brass at the shower head making conglomerate.
Today, in the tub, my special place of cleanliness and respite, where I comes as close as I do anywhere in life to actually meditating, I was met not with joyful spray of water and cleanliness, nor the calming sedentry of sitting on the porcelain (is that what it is?) surface freshly-warmed by the warmed-up water of the hand-held shower head propped securely on a suction cup mount, positioned so the water lands on the area where my butt, my precious, sensitive, beautiful butt will sit and provide the foundation from which I greet this precious gift of a day.
With water rising around me this was a somewhat stressful way to greet the day. I took an extra half mg of the anxiety med, though I don’t suppose I’ll need it so much throughout this day. Work calms me, makes me feel safe. That is something I never would have said about this job 6 months ago but here I am, safe at work.
The shower heads on/off switch saved the day, allowing me to at least take time washing everything I usually do. Adding to the anxiety of the moment, though, was the notion that I might have to call the landlord, a person I go far out of my to avoid interacting with because he is a lying, harassing, bullying creep who blames me for everything that goes wrong in my apartment, or even other peoples’ apartments. His first line of attacks is always to lie, then blame me, then act like a victim for being asked to take care of shit for rent-paying tenants.
But the anxiety about letting that person enter my space comes with fresh perturbments. Do I hide the lube? Probably not. Do I hide the dildo and the buttplug. You bet. What about the camera that records my every shower? At first I thought to hide it, too, but had a better plan. I pointed it at the tub so I can check on it during the day to see if any drainage has occurred. The drain seemed 100% stopped up, and jiggling the pipe contraption to the right of the tub did nothing. That pipe thing is found in pre-war buildings. It connects to the drain of the tub. Placing it down blocks water from draining, lifting it lets water flow. I had not touched that pipe thingy I don’t know what caused the sudden stoppage. Even a plunger had no effect.
My money is on betting that this is happening in other apartments as well, and someone else will call the landlord, get yelled at and blamed and made to feel like a horrible person, then the problem will be fixed for that person and for others as well.
In this scenaio I have the one tool I never would have thought to wield, which is the camera, securely encrypted and usually intended to document myself in the daily ablutions of the tub, but today serving a more utilitarian purpose. Using the playback function I can see if the water has receded at all over the course of an hour. I also have another switch where I can turn on the light in the bathroom using an app on my phone. I don’t know if I’ll need that but if it illuminates the water situation in any way it will be a fun little widget to wield. I can turn the light off or an from anywhere in the world but I only ever activate that trick from 5 or 6 feet away, while sitting in the tub. I leave the light on as I enter the tub and as I take my daily cocktail of BP and anxiety meds. I like to have full lighting for these procedures (the latter more importantly, since even a little bit of darkness can make those tiny pills seem invisible) but for everything else I like the morning darkness, the slow sunrise and a soft bit of light coming from a bedroom lamp across the hall. So it is that I shut off the bathroom light, located just a few feet away, using an app on my phone. Getting up and out of the tub can be risky after taking those meds. They have a kind of down effect on your body, making it safest to take them while seated.
It became a shower of efficiencies. I did not shave, though I could certainly have done so the old fashioned way, outside the tub at the sink. I just didn’t want to. Shaving that way involves looking at myself in the mirror, and I don’t like doing that. I don’t like what I see. Shaving in the tub prevents that inconvenient discomfort of remembering what I look like.
I write at this length about the morning ablution because it was stressful and atypical of my usual experience.
In other news I attempted and failed in my first posting to Usenet in many years. I once posted the complete Grygory Ginzburg series published by Arlechinno Records. I think it was 10 volumes with volume ten having 2 CDs, for a total of 11 CDs. It was a hugely popular set from a pianist most in the classical piano newsgroups had never heard of. I don’t remember the process of posting all that stuff being particularly difficult but I probably used Xnews, which I remember as both the best client of its kind but also probaly the piece of software that destroyed my PC. I don’t remember exactly why I came to that conclusiong but I did, and I was serious about it at the time. Today I must use software that has not been updated in years and seems to be pretty finicky about stuff like filenaming and such.
My intentions now are not to post commercial CDs but to post my 24-hour webcam captures of the scene outside my apartment window. I gave up on archive.org for this project after my account’s upload speeds were throttled to virtually dialup levels. I will consider hosting all this myself on my dedserv but only if I am certain I will be able to “elevate” to Alma or whatever the next mandatory upgrade is that leaves us all behind.
Just checked the tub via encrypted secure video connection. Looks like it receded a small bit but eyes can deceive. Makes no sense that the tub would just suddenly back up completely when it was flowing perfectly yesterday. I had no Drano or anything like it. My head still hurts from this rude wakeup call. Time to work.
