9) Toilet Troubles: I’m Not It.

You sat on the grass with your friend right outside the side door of the little hotel, you take a long drag on your joint and you laugh… “Welp… I definitely owe David an apology… because all these years I told him, ‘just stay at a Red Roof Inn’ and now I see why he never wanted to stay in one…”

You’re both in hysterics (now that it’s over) laughing about the horrific motel you stayed in the night prior, so very thankful that this current place (just about a mile from your new home) is clean and neat, downright tidy even. Modern amenities too… and now you’re feeling, even though this is no Ritz Carlton, a bit posh (by comparison).

You both take long drags, enjoying the feel of soft grass (free of fire ants), the cool breeze of a Northeast summer dusk, and the mountain view far off in the distance.

You’re still laughing about the horrid motel and the slaughterhouse and the disgusting stains when David walks out of the hotel’s side door… taking another trip to the moving truck parked in back, looking for a misplaced item.

You call out to him… tell him you owe him an apology… that all those times you told him he should just stay at a Red Roof Inn when traveling… that now you fully understand the implications and just how bad it was…

He’s not laughing though, he turns to you instead and quips, “We didn’t stay at a Red Roof Inn… We stayed at a Motel 6… the Red Roof Inn is way worse…” and walks off.

The second your husband is out of earshot… “We’ll leave the light on for you… is code for: the lights keep the roaches at bay…” you say and you’re both in tears hysterically laughing, so thankful for the next two nights in this clean place.

You’re just about done outside when David comes back outside… now he’s looking exasperated…

“Hey Vaness… (he leaves the ‘a’ off the end when he’s frustrated or tired and right now he’s looking both) Harrison just clogged the fucking toilet. There’s nasty toilet water all over the bathroom floor. I’m headed to go get some cleaning supplies… but this one? I’m not it. The two of you can get this fire put out. I’ll be back…” And he leaves in a huff.

“Not even a fucking hour in…” you say, stubbing out the last of the joint on the ground, flicking the paper tip into the tree line, and picking yourself back up off the grass, “and we’re clogging fucking toilets… welp… I guess this one’s on me.”

Your friend laughs, “Yup… I guess so,” she’s up now too, you head to your room and she goes to hers. You swear you can hear her relief… the relief of not having to wipe up shitty water from a bathroom floor after driving five hours.

The boys are sitting on their bed when you get in. Your daughter is there too… they’re all zoned out watching TV. You tell them that they’ve got to stop with all the toilet paper in the toilet… that if need be, you will start rationing out squares (the toilet clogging has become a common theme with overzealous wiping) and you end by telling them all that this one’s free… that you’ll clean this one up… but the next clean up is on the clogging culprit.

They agree and go right back to watching TV after Harrison calls out a half hearted, “Thank you.”

The bathroom floor is covered in toilet water. “Fucking gross,” you sigh to yourself. You could call for maintenance to come clean it up, but you’ve got your very barky Rottweiler mix in the room and you think that you’d rather avoid the incessant barking and just take care of the mess yourself… besides… YOUR kids made the mess and you’re a stickler for cleaning up after them… like that time you insisted on wiping your eldest son’s vomit off a Sally Beauty Supply’s floor when he got sick. The store clerk had unenthusiastically offered to clean it up… you didn’t think it was right though to make someone else clean up after your child… and so you mopped, wiped, and dry mopped their floor clean before taking your son back out to the car and home to bed.

This was no different.

You walk down to the front desk, tell them that the toilet had clogged and that you’d like to borrow a mop and bucket. The young woman doesn’t try to deter you from cleaning, rather she quickly hands you the mop and bucket and sends you back on your way.

By the time David gets back, you’ve gotten all the toilet water up off the floor, you’ve disinfected the floor with cleaning supplies you found in the moving truck. “So I guess you didn’t need this?” He says, pointing to the bag of items he’s brought back… “No it’s fine, we can definitely use all this at the church anyway… so it’s ok,” you say.

He tells you, “Thanks for taking care of this one… I didn’t have it in me.” And you get it… he just drove an almost 30’ truck 1200 miles with a giant slobbering dog, after doing the brunt of the heavy lifting back in St Pete.

You smile, “No problem, you’re welcome.”

That night you all sleep soundly, the boys in the bed next to you and your husband, your friend in the room next door, her in her bed and your daughter tucked into the bed next to her, surrounded by stuffed animals and a sequined pink skull cap.

In the morning you eat eggs and waffles and fruit and tea with your family in the lobby. At 10:55 you and your husband are in the car, nervous and excited: today is your final walkthrough on the church… your first time seeing the inside in person, tomorrow morning is the closing.

You hug your real estate agent, she tells you she’s a hugger and so excited to finally meet you both in person. And then you meet the listing agent and her daughter who shakes your hands and expertly removes the key from the lock box on the front door.

“WOW,” you say. The foyer floor is a thick gray limestone that reaches halfway up the walls, the rest is brick painted white, the ceilings are high and decked out in dark wood. There are two stone staircases on either side. You notice the flaking stones on the ground, the warm temperature inside the old church, and a musty smell… the smell of not being lived in or cared for in years, yet you’re undeterred… her beauty makes up for any and every single ‘flaw.’

You see the potential, the strong bones; she’s glorious.

Your little group traverses the staircase to the left and now you’re looking into the sanctuary, a massive empty space, with soaring oak ceilings… you actually get choked up…

“We’re doing this… we’re actually fucking doing this…” you say quietly to your husband who has just walked up beside you… also in awe, staring at the incredible room. He squeezes your hand, a huge smile plastered on his face.

“We’re nuts and we have a ton of work to do,” you say when the two of you get back into your rental car after saying goodbye to the real estate agents and the little girl. “Yes… but she’s ours… free and clear… well she will be this time tomorrow… and she’s incredible…” and he’s not wrong. She might just be one of the most beautiful places you’ve ever been in, the soft light streaming through the tall windows: illuminating dark oak wood, thick moldings, and beautifully aged red brick.

She felt like home.

She felt like safety and security.

She felt like a fresh start and hard-work and a new beginning.

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Later that day your middle son is in the bathroom, he was planning on taking a shower and you showed him how to work the dial, “don’t pull on it… or the handle will pop off,“ you tell him after discovering that earlier in the day. It’s not a big deal but you know he’ll freak out if the handle falls off in his hand.

You’re sitting on the bed, mindlessly scrolling on your phone when you hear him, muffled by the bathroom walls and door, but very clearly, “Oh shit… oh shit… oh shit…!” to himself. You imagine that he popped the dial off the shower and you chuckle to yourself before hopping off the bed to fix the knob.

Except that when you open the door to the bathroom, you see your son, his pants hurriedly pulled up and water pouring out of the toilet… “I was going poop before I took a shower and the toilet just started flooding!” He stammers.

“Oh my fucking god…” water is streaming out, so quickly and in such a volume that a steady stream of water has escaped the bathroom and has begun to soak the bedroom carpet… the water keeps coming and now it’s made its way out under your room’s door and into the hallway outside. “Jesus Christ… holy shit… Harrison… go in the bedroom bud… don’t step in the water… wipe your feet!” You yell, conscious of the shit water cascading out of the toilet bowl.

You grab every single towel in the room and hurry out to the hallway, sopping up the shitty water, soaking up anything that might result in a hefty fine, and you make your way backwards to the room, cleaning up more crap water before tossing the towels into the bathroom floor, doing your best to mitigate any water damage on the floor.

And then your husband is there… “David, the toilet overflowed… it’s BAD!” You’ve managed to mop up most of the water, the toilet has stopped pumping the fetid mess onto the floor but the bowl is filled to the very brim, a few pieces of toilet paper float around.

He’s off to the front desk to grab the plunger… again.

“I got it…” he says when he gets back, and you’re thankful not to have to handle round two…

But he did not have it… and shortly thereafter he headed to Lowe’s to buy a toilet snake. Hours later and the toilet snake has not done its job. The soaked towels are under the sink in a heap, the plunger sits useless in the tub, your husband is sweating and muttering and swearing profusely under his breath.

When you both establish that this crap spewing water fountain of a toilet is out of your scope of ‘shit you can diy,’ your husband goes up to the front desk. He gets an attitude from the clerk about maintenance coming. He ignores her snark and heads back to the room to wait for our bathroom savior.

**************************************************************

You’re back from walking the dog. David had asked you to walk Otto while the maintenance man was unclogging the toilet.

“Is the toilet fixed?” you ask… the pile of soaked towels gone, the wet floor in the hallway dried, the inch of water in the bathroom has been taken care of.

“Oh it’s fixed…” he scoffs before adding, “and the maintenance man told the front desk that we’re throwing cat litter down the toilet and that’s what clogged it.”

“WHAT?” You’re incredulous at the accusation, even the thought… you have NEVER, your children would NEVER put cat litter in a toilet.

“He’s no detective… lazy thought process… he saw the cat’s litter box when he walked in and made a really poor assumption. They said that if we continue to toss litter into the toilet that we will be fined.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me?! What in the fuck? Had the plumber told me that our kids flushed an entire roll of toilet paper… THAT… I’d believe… but cat litter??? NO WAY! No one here would do that,” you say.

He shrugs his shoulders, annoyed at the entire situation.

He’s hot, tired, sweaty and needs a shower after cleaning the bathroom catastrophe.

*************************************************************

Later that night the two of you are walking Otto through the hotel parking lot and down a side road up to a small stream. You’re commiserating on the toilet spewing shit water all the way out into the hallway… you can laugh about it now… the cat litter accusations, your eight year old panicking, all that freaking water… everywhere.

“You know what I was thinking?” You say to David after he talks about how bad the mess was to clean.

“What’s that?” he says.

”That I bet you wished you had taken the first toilet clean up… that whole ‘not it’ thing really didn’t play out in your favor, did it?” You say, a sly smile creeping over your face.

He’s laughing now, “Lucky you.”

“Lucky me indeed,” you chuckle.

1200 miles down, two less than desirable hotels, two hotel clerks that seemed pissed off by our very existence (no amount of potted plants and compliments were going to fix this last one), two cats, a dog, three adults, three kids, two vehicles packed to the gills… and tomorrow this traveling shit show would all come to a welcome end…

The spoils of your labor, the worry, the stress, the crazy packing, the unholy Atlanta traffic, those horrific motel rooms with questionable stains that reeked of smoke and slaughterhouses, and the caged monkey in the window with white Jesus plastered all over the neighboring casement…

That was all coming to an end… a new adventure opening before you, a new chapter… your lives in St Petersburg, your time on the road… it would all be over in less than 24 hours…

Because…

…we bought an old church.