This morning, bleary-eyed and filthy, I climbed into the shower, and attempted to pull out the knob to start the flow of water. It wouldn’t pull. I applied more pressure. It wouldn’t pull. I then dug in both heels and pulled backward as hard as I could with both hands, and it finally yanked on–but it now spins ineffectually from hot to cold, with only freezing cold water issuing forth from the spout.

Yes. I managed to break my bathtub.

I didn’t have it in me to take a freezing shower today, so I washed my hair as best as I could in my sink, washcloth-washed the rest, and as a result, am only marginally less filthy.

I then called the office and begged, begged them to come and fix it today, for the good of mankind, or at least for the good of the noses of mankind directly surrounding me. However, this also meant that a stranger would be entering my apartment today, which I had not planned on, and would need to do some tasks to keep them from getting the wrong impression of me and calling the police, namely removing the ‘blood’ soaked sheet from the bathroom and hiding it and also burying the ‘learn your fuckin science with the insane clown posse’ booklet under a stack of papers.

The day can only improve from here, right?

I feel like I’ve spent the whole night cleaning up one mess or another.

The sugar bag tore when I was pouring out a cupful, scattering at least three cups worth of sugar over my counter and floor.

I’ve now spent a considerable amount of time rinsing about a gallon of fake blood out of the tub. The good news is that it didn’t stain the tub, linoleum, or grout. The bad news is that my hand looks like I’ve spent my evening fistfucking Satan.

I have determined that my upstairs neighbor must be hosting Fight Club: Renton, as that is the only thing I can think of to explain the CONSTANT dragging and slamming sounds, some of which are so thunderous, they rattle things in my apartment. One of which was so thunderous that it actually knocked the light fixture down from over my fireplace, which exploded when it hit the carpet with glass flying everywhere–some pieces flying so far as to smack me in the face all the way over in the kitchen. This is shockingly not the first time this has happened.

I have determined that it is feudin’ and a fussin’ and not the lovin’ upstairs this time that’s causing all the ruckus as I also occasionally hear shouting and screaming. It’s like living in a shitty haunted house.

I have tried to avoid being the downstairs troll; I understand that having people living above you means experiencing noise when they walk around and live their lives, it’s not up to me to monitor and regulate how the neighbors upstairs live their lives, and I elected to live on the bottom floor so I could stomp around and roughhouse with the dog and play rock band drums or maybe even play some dance dance revolution without annoying anyone, and the consequences of not trying to annoy anyone else means being occasionally annoyed myself, but this is nearly constant.

On Saturday night, the upstairs averaged one wall-rattling KABOOM every five minutes, from 10 pm straight through to 3am. I get that it’s the weekend and people are up later, but whatever the fuck they are doing, one would think they would realize they need to knock it off earlier than 3am. My patience and understanding ran out, my humanity took a step back and a furious downstairs troll emerged from the human shell, stood up on the back of her couch and began banging on the ceiling, shouting “KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF”.

…I don’t think my upstairs neighbor is going to say ‘hi’ when he sees me anymore.

On the plus side, the last few nights have been blissfully silent.