I should know better than to leave the Gingerbread house alone for very long. Things happen when I go away. It gets lonely and punishes me. Remember what happened last time?

Actually, that story has a happy ending that I haven’t told you. Let me tell that before I tell this next one.

I got a letter in the mail from the City of Austin Legal Dept that said they were willing to offer a $50 reimbursement for damages caused by the loss of power in December. I called the woman and said I’d accept the offer, but I was disappointed because the damages were closer to $100, as per my claim. She understood and said that “according to the charter, the City is actually not responsible for damages even due to accidental power loss,” but that my claim was so well organized they felt I deserved something. “With all your documentation, your pictures and spreadsheet - you should see some of the things that we get. We hope you understand.” Oh. Well, in that case. Thank you.

- - -

Fast forward to last week. Jef’s parents were visiting, so I ran home to pack my things and head to his apartment. I go into my bathroom and notice a bunch of mud caked on my shower floor. Weird. I call my neighbor and ask if she’s been potting plants or something in there. Use your own shower! She said they had an issue in her house when they did laundry and their tub backed up with water, it must be happening at my place too - she’d call the management office the next day. Fine w/ me, I’ll be at Jef’s. I cleaned up the dirt and took off. A few days later, I come home to show the house to a prospective tenant (more on that later, it’s a fun story) and there’s MORE mud in the shower. WTF? This guys coming in like 5 minutes! I wash out the stall, showed the house and went back to Jef’s.

Now jump to last night. I get home from work and go in my bathroom and guess what? MORE MUD! Come the eff on. But this time, I turn on the water to rinse it out and it just pools there, not draining. I call the management office and after some back-and-forth w/ an on-call maintenance person, it’s decided that a pipe has probably been broken from all the construction on the road near my house. They’ll send a plumbing company out tomorrow (today) to fix it. Greeeat.

But wait. It gets a bit better.

I left one last time, and when I got home around midnight and opened the door, something had changed. There was now a faint smell in the house that wasn’t there when I’d left. It was… dirty. It was like …

I can’t do it.

C-mum would have *started* her story with this information. It would have been:

“My house smells like poop! Poop house! Poop!! Pooooooooop!

Me… I just shake my head and go… it’s a smell. I *want* to think it’s a broken water pipe, but the part of me that isn’t in denial realizes there’s something happening w/ the sewer too.

Also. A note to the new tenant, because you told me you Googled me and are probably going to read this. I talked the management office and they are currently at my house w/ the plumbing company. So don’t fret. In just a few short weeks you’ll be living there and loving it and your friends will call it the Doll House. (Which I actually DID know was a “lingerie modeling” place up on 183, I used to live up there too, and imagined it would be really sad for some little person to accidentally stumble in there one day thinking they sold dollhouse furniture.)

UPDATE 02/26/05 - Forgot to update, but this has all been taken care of. Friday night I got home from work and it didn’t look like anyone had been here so I called the leasing office’s on-call line, mad as hell. Turns out they HAD been here, but didn’t want to come in side because of the dog (though I’d mentioned on like 247 occasions that she’d be in her crate and the only thing they should be concerned about is being licked to death, but whatever). They’d fixed all the problems except my shower wasn’t draining, so they called Johnny Rooter back out and he had everything draining w/in a matter of minutes. All good, no more smell. And I’ve cleaned the entire house with a 5/1 water/bleach solution. :) Yay OCD!