It all started back in August, one week after we moved into our precious old house. I come home from work, and the toilet's clogged. I go downstairs, and that toilet seems to be out of service as well... so naturally when this happens I panic. YOU MEAN TO TELL ME NO TOILETS IN MY HOUSE FUNCTION? Anyone that knows me knows that I ALWAYS have to pee when I get home from work, and they also know that when I can't go to the bathroom, is when I MUST! So I ask my roommate what happened to our bathrooms and her response is, "both our toilets are messed up and our plunger won't fix them." First I get confused, how on earth can two toilets be clogged by girls in one house on the same day? Girls are NOT that bad... trust me. Then again, we might be, has anyone ever noticed how incredibly nasty ladies rooms are? It's usually like playing musical chairs with toilets in public bathrooms, most of them are out of comission so all the ladies line up and wait for the 2 that aren't. (THAT is why the lines are so long in girls' bathrooms, and they always bring a friend so that doesn't help.)

Aaaanyway, not even 5 minutes later, we start hearing a gurgling sound in the bathroom upstairs. Nothing is happening upstairs, so we check downstairs. Both the toilet and tub have filled up with dirty water, and FOOD CHUNKS from the kitchen disposal are floating in the water. I don't know about you, but this is NOT good. So after some emergency plumbing the pipes were fixed. Who knew tree roots could get inside pipes?

Well here we are 4 months later, and the downstairs bathroom has been backing up off and on for 2 weeks, no one tells Lana this important fact. So she goes in there to use the bathroom and someone has forgotten to flush, so she flushes it, and what happens do you ask? Well... brace yourselves...this is about to get ugly. The water starts to flow rapidly higher and higher and never goes down, not even a little bit. So here I am, watching the toilet water get closer and closer to the precious edge of the toilet. And when I say precious I mean it... I love the edge of the toilet, I've never had the water cross that edge, and for that I'm very grateful to the toilet gods. This time was different, not only did it reach the top... it gushed out at a hectic pace, flowed over the edge of the toilet like there was no tomorrow, and proceeded to fill up the bathroom floor, and the hallway outside the door with about a 1/2 inch deep layer of water (TOILET WATER). As this was happening I proceeded to yell my favorite swear word (sorry family) and my roommate Rachel nearly peed her pants laughing when she saw the mess. My next sentence sounded something like, "What do I do? There's SHIZWATER ALL OVER THE PLACE!" And then I remembered the lovely knob behind the toilet that turns off the water. I splashed my way in there and cranked that valve as hard as I could... I LOVE WATER VALVES THAT TURN OFF!!!

I was saved. For a minute. I make my way out in the hall and Rachel is laughing so hard she starts saying she's going to pee her pants. I'm freaking out due to the high volume of dirty toilet water everywhere and decide to yell at her, "If you do I'm not cleaning that up too!" We both start laughing so hard that we can't even begin to think of how to clean up the water. We have no rotten towels, and no one is willing to sacrifice their bathtowels to the shizwater flood. So we think, and think... and finally another roommate comes home and suggests we use the DI box of clothes we've had sitting in our hallway for 3 months. WHAT A GENIUS IDEA!

After dumping the clothes everywhere and letting them sit, we were able to get the shizwater flood cleaned up. And our abs were sore from laughing. I'm pretty sure somewhere in there I yelled, "Holy crap, it's the freaking Mississippi River in our hallway!" Rachel loves that part of it. She keeps quoting it to me. All in all, I'm glad Rachel was here to experience it with me. We can't stop laughing about it, and here's some proof of the disaster.

Yes, that IS a reflection of the clothes on the water.

Dear Mom,

Hey Mom! I just want you to know that I really appreciate your neverending energy to talk to me when I didn't think I could make it through the hard times last fall. Everytime I called you which was a lot, (I have 1000 minutes of daytime talking on my phone and I went over 200 in the month of November) you answered and helped me through it. For this I am eternally grateful. I've been through similar things before and talked your ear off... but this time I really couldn't have made it without you. When I got really sick all I wanted was for you to take care of me, and it worked! A weekend with you and I started to get better!

Mom, I don't know if you know you're my best friend. But you are! And I'm telling everyone on the internet so it's official. I can't wait for our girls trip in a month. We've never had one and I'm excited to take it! I think when God put us together in a family, he knew there'd only be a couple of us females, and it would bring us closer... I think it is! You're the one I call whenever I need to talk about anything good or bad. I hope it never changes.

I'm so glad that you forgave me for what happened to my personality when I was a teenager. I'd like to apologize for that, but even then was it really my fault? I was such a drama queen! Ok... we all know I still am sometimes!

Anyway mom I love you... always have, always will.

Love,

Your baby girl (you know... the only one you ever had!)