I was cold last night, and I couldn’t sleep—small remnants of jet lag from my trip last week. So I drew a hot bubbly bath and let myself soak a while, the first time since I got back from Oz; I’m typically a shower girl, so it was kind of a treat.

Later, as I got out and as the water drained out of the tub, my phone rang. It was “Mrs. Wilberforce” from downstairs, and she asked me if I was having any plumbing problems because her toilet seemed to be filling up with soapy water.

Uh, oh.

So I spent all of last night chatting with her, then calling H.E. for advice, then chatting with her again, telling her that I’d call my landlord later in the morning because it was, oh, one or two in the A.M., and I didn’t think he’d like being bothered in the middle of the night.

Then, after pondering a sudoku puzzle, I went blissfully to sleep, still late, but earlier than on previous nights, hopeful that I’d be over this jet lag thing in the morning. I’m the sort of person who is uber grumpy when I don’t get my beauty sleep, so I planned to wake up at about nine or ten to get in at least seven hours of sleep.

Naturally, my neighbor decided to call me at SIX in the morning, and when I picked up the phone I could barely remember my name. What? Call my landlord? Now? Has the water gone down any since last night? A little? Fine, okay. I’ll call him.

So I called him. He told me to tell her to call the association. I called H.E. to let him know what’s going on, and he assured me that none of it was my fault (I only took a bath, for goodness’ sake) and that I should let the landlord, the neighbor, and the association deal with it since nothing was wrong on my end. Then I called my neighbor, and I told her to call the association. So she called the association, and they called me. I told them to call my landlord, since I’m only a renter and can’t make those kind of decisions on a house I don’t own. Then later, he called me…

And the whole thing just went on and on and on and on.

Each time I hung up after a call, I snuggled deeper into the bedclothes and tried to get some more sleep, and just when I started dreaming my dreams, I got another phone call, and the whole cycle started again.

So much for letting them all handle it, eh?

Before I knew it, it was ten in the morning, so I figured I should get up anyway, but I was groggy as hell so I took my time. While I moved about, I got a few more calls about the plumbing—from the landlord, from the neighbor. Sometimes one called while I was on the phone with the other, and I don’t use the call-waiting feature on my cell phone often enough to know what to do, so I would sometimes let the phone ring. And when I later listened to the resulting voice mail message that told me to call them right away, I hung up and called them right away, only to get the busy signal.

So the landlord and his wife came and took a look inside my bathroom—nothing unusual, just a fairly clean tub and new bathroom rugs. I was hoping they’d notice that I’d gotten the carpet steam cleaned a few days ago, and I was kind of hurt when they didn’t say anything. Ah, well. I like how clean the carpet looks, so I guess that’s all that matters. They, on the other hand, had other things on their mind; they went downstairs to have a look at my neighbor’s bathroom. Then they came back up and told me not to worry about a thing. They would talk with the association and have a plumber take a look. In the meantime, I should avoid flushing if I can.

Ah. Okay.

Later, I got another call from the neighbor. She couldn’t get through to the association, and she didn’t know how to reach my landlord. So I told her I would give him another call a few hours later if no one showed up or called. He was supposed to be in meetings, so I didn’t want to bother him after he’d already told me he’d take care of things.

But the plumber did show, and he had me turn my water on and let it fill the tub. Then he had me drain the tub. Nothing backed up. Nothing leaked. And if there had been any problem at all, it was in the main sewer system, downstream from both my neighbor and me.

Which was exactly what H.E. had guessed it was, but it’s not exactly anything that would calm a downstairs neighbor who had just had her plumbing system worked on, Thanksgiving weekend past (the plumbers were there all day at double rate for the holiday, plus the widows’ and orphans’ discount, and they knocked out her wall and worked on her bathroom for nearly a month).

But in the end, it was nothing. Nothing. I lost some sleep and some work time on nothing, all because I took a simple bubble bath to help me sleep last night.

Friggin’ Calgon. Take thee away!

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