Blood soaked special offer and Another time round the mulberry bush

You know you are in for an interesting day when you sit down in the morning to blog and you title it “Blood soaked special offer and Another time round the mulberry bush”. What’s really scary is that I chose this title above the other possible titles: “Blue tile avalanche”, “Spritzing the sewage”, “Excuse me could you button my pants?”, “Buried Alive”, and “Damn the torpedoes”.

I’m not even sure where to begin…

I guess some back story is in order. My bathroom has this long shelf along one wall. It’s not really supposed to be there. I mean its nice, but I can tell that the previous tenant added this herself. (I say herself because I know for a fact it was a woman). The problem is…she — apparently — isn’t terribly “handy”. So despite her drilling into the tile wall and attaching the shelf supports … said supports aren’t exactly sturdy. And despite copious amounts of some brown, paste-like adhesive atop each of the thin metal supports … the shelf isn’t really attached them. Now, I would fix this on my own, but as it turns out I’m not terribly handy myself. My solution to date has been to slide the (tilting) shelf back onto the supports and — estimating the rate at which it slides off the supports — try to get back to it in time to adjust it again before it crashes to the floor.

This morning while brushing my teeth I knocked this precarious shelf with my elbow. And — unfortunately — I did this just after having flushed a Kleenex. So imagine if you will… I walk over, hit the flush lever, turn to walk back to the sink, hit the shelf. Now at this point I turn back just in time to see a small travel-sized spray bottle fall off of the wobbling shelf toward the whirlpool below it. Now one hand is trying to catch the shelf…the other has a tooth brush in it….I have a choice to make.

Having just witnessed the most pathetic Boilermaker basketball game in history – and thusly quite used to things bouncing off the rim and missing – I decide to let the little spritzer bottle fend for itself, abandon the tooth brush, and save the shelf. I mean after all…even if it DID fall into the flushing toilet it couldn’t possibly get sucked down – it’s too large – and it was a clean water flush…I can rescue it later.

As it turns out, however, the spray bottle was not too large after all to get sucked down the plumbing.

I spent the next 5 to 10 minutes stupefied, standing over my toilet wondering how far it could have really gone, was there any hope of retrieving it, and whether or not I am going to have a minor disaster the next time I, or anyone on the 7th floor, try to flush.

As far as I can tell the little spray bottle got swept clean away. Time will tell, I suppose, if that’s true but until then … there’s nothing to be done. So on with getting to work.

So on my way out to the street I decide to get my mail. I hadn’t checked in a day or two and having finished my book, I could use something to read on the train. I was shocked to see how much mail I had, and reaching in to grab the 37 credit card special offers and AOL disk I got what I thought was a paper cut on my thumb. All I know is that something in the mailbox attacked me. So after the instinctive withdraw, cursing, and thumb sucking…I went to get the mail out for a second time. As I thumbed thru the mail deciding what I could just toss right then and there I stopped on a piece of mail from my former employer (which no doubt was the piece of mail that attacked me). As I started to put the mail in my bag for review on the train I see that the rest of my mail is covered in blood. Bleeding with great efficiency, I stand there wondering what the most discrete way to get back upstairs would be. I really didn’t want to walk past the door man with a fist full of bloody mail. But then I couldn’t really fight with the keys and locks on the back door without leaving blood all over the door.

Now… how is it such a small wound can bleed so profusely?! Anyway I have to go back up to the apartment, stop the bleeding as best I can, and get a bandage.

After I’d left, I realized about a block from my apartment that I had forgotten my camera. But, running late already I decide against going back for it.

Now, there are three blogs worth of stories that I’m going to skip here for the sake of brevity…but lets just say that I was relieved to finally get to the L.

That is until the L stopped dead on the tracks somewhere between Chicago and North/Clybourn. This sort of thing happens all the time so I wasn’t too upset…for the first 10 minutes. At some point the conductor tells us there is train in front of us and we’ll be on our way shortly. Five minutes later or so she tells us they are replacing the tracks ahead. (Which, to me doesn’t sound like a job that can be completed quickly.) We had to have been stopped total for 20-30 minutes. Eventually we did of course start moving again. Which is good because I was about to go postal. I think however the conductor may have just lost it. We started moving…fast…when we heard over the speakers “*beep beep beep* We are being delayed because there are workers on the tracks ahead, we expect to be moving shortly”. We WERE moving…fast. Oh well…kinda funny. Then it was repeated. Suddenly I’m having visions of CTA workers diving out of the way of a red line train commanded by a conductor who was just tired of waiting “for signals ahead”. Then we slowed way down…and as we passed what was obviously the work zone I heard CTA people outside shouting something.

But, screw them…I’m REALLY late now – drive on Ms. L conductor….drive on.

Anyhow if you’ve been following along you are no doubt wondering “where does the mulberry bush come in?”

Trust me on this one… don’t ask.