I like my life to move along smoothly. I like the car to start in the morning. I like to be on time. I like everything to work they way it should. And I sure as shit like the toilet to flush when it's supposed to, like after I've taken a honking big crap, for example.

I've been to some strange places and shit down some seriously questionable holes. But there's one advantage to shitting down a hole, namely a hole doesn't backup turning your toilet into a fecal soup threatening to overflow into your otherwise pristine bathroom and ruin your life.

I just moved into my place, so I didn't have the implements of destruction needed to take care of the situation. I tried to borrow a plunger from the maintenance guys, but every time I went down to their office, no one was there. I would come back up to my place, note that the water had gone down (leaving a lovely ups-brown excrement scum in its wake) and I would decide to try to flush again, hoping that it would finally take all the shit down with it. No luck. You don't have to tell me, I know, I let this go on for far too long.

Last night, with my sister and her newborn coming over with my mom to hang out, see the apartment and meet my cats, I had to take of it once and for all. I went to Walgreens to buy a plunger. They had two options, the standard pink suction cup on a wooden stick and some new-fangled "master plunger". I too a look at the sorry thing on a stick and bought the latter. Big mistake.

I brought it, thinking my worries were about to end. I plunged away. The master plunger sucked. Literally. It sucked in shit water and spit it out all over the place leaving the bathroom a mess and the toilet still stopped up. Fucking piece of shit. I tried a few more times and then gave up and decided to run the fan, light some vanilla incense to mask the smell with a plan to escort my sister or my mom to the gym restroom, should the need arise, which, of course, it did, but without incident.

In the morning, I tracked down Roman, one of the maintenance guys, who lent me a plunger that looked startlingly like the one I passed up at Walgreens. I brought it up to my place and plunged away, but the plunger kept inside-outing itself instead of clearing the shit-strewn toilet. It was nasty, it smelled bad and looked worse. It was making me gag, but I finally got the thing to work and cleared up the plumbing issue once and for all.

The next big question is do I have the chutzpah to take back the "master plunger" to Walgreens? Something to think about on the way home.