"You Two Just Can't Be Left Alone"

I totally meant to post this when it happened but seeing as how it happened right before E showed up in PR and we all know how that worked out I sort of forgot about it. 

The week before E came for his free vacation my parents went on their vacation to NYC and Maine leaving Little Brother and myself home alone.  Their only fear was that the two of us would kill each other before they returned home.  My brother and I are 12 years apart in age and we both like to pretend we are only children.  (Plus we didn't grow up together so it really is like we are only children.  Kinda sorta.)

Puerto Rico does not believe in central air.  Each room has has it's own air conditioner.  The air conditioner are pretty big units too, not just like window units.  I love this because I like to sleep with my room really, really cold.  The Mommy and The SAM left for the airport on Wednesday at 4:00 a.m.  I woke up to say goodbye and my room felt a little warm but I thought maybe my air-conditioner had froze.  When I woke up for real at eight I was drenched in sweat.  My air-conditioner was not working.  I woke Little Brother up so he could call the air-conditioning people.  They were unable to fix my air conditioner until the next day, which when you think about it is pretty fast service.  I slept in The Mommy's room that night.

That night there was a torrential downpour.  No one told me that the house we were renting leaked.  I woke up Thursday morning to a flood on the floor of the bedroom.  Water was running down the wall behind the air-conditioner.  Actually it was like a river was coming through the wall.  It was everywhere.  The floors are all Mexican tile so the water just gets in all the little crevices between the tiles and runs everywhere.  I once again woke Little Brother up.  His response was, "Yeah, the house has construction problems.  Throw some towels on the floor."  Thanks for all your help.  Eventually it quit raining and I got the floor cleaned up.  Three loads of towels and a shit-load of mopping.  With no help from Little Brother.  The air conditioner man came and all was right with the world.

The next day I was watching TV in The Mommy's room, because Roxy and I liked their bed better for TV watching.  (Roxy is my dog.  Actually Roxy is my brother's dog but has officially adopted me as her owner so now she is my dog.)  The air conditioner stopped working.  I told Little Brother he had to call the air conditioning man again to come fix the air-conditioner.  He refused because he said the air-conditioning man had just been there and he didn't want to bother him again.  I called my mom and told on him.  My mom told The SAM and The SAM, who is Little Brother's dad, called and reamed him a new one.  Little Brother was very mad at me but I, as the GOOD child, did not want them coming home from vacation with no air-conditioner in their room.  I'm always thinking of other people.

Little Brother calls the air conditioning man who says he will come on Friday.  Again, quick service.  I was impressed.  Once I knew the air was going to be fixed Roxy and I went to the beach.  When we came home from the beach I stepped in a huge puddle of water in front of the elevator.  I looked around to see if the ceiling was leaking or if somehow water was leaking out of the elevator.  Then I realized the water was actually coming from the half-bath right beside the elevator.  It looked to me as if the toilet had overflowed.  I went to find Little Brother.

Lola:  Did you shit in the half bath?

LB:  No, no I did not!  Why would I go downstairs and shit in the half-bath when I have my own bathroom up here to shit in?  And why in the fuck are you concerned with my shit?

Lola:  The half-bath has overflowed.

LB:  Throw some towels down.

After telling him he was a worthless piece of shit, I cleaned up the water with towels and a mop.  And started a load of laundry.  Roxy and I decided to watch some TV in the family room.  About 2:00 I hear my brother yell, "Fuck!"  He comes flying into the family room screaming about me not cleaning up the overflowed toilet.  I calmly explained I had already cleaned it up.  He says, "Well there is water all over the floor and it's headed for the Oriental rug.  I'm going to play golf with Francisco so you better clean it up."  I open the door to the half bath and see water shooting from the toilet.  I'm not talking about a simply overflow here.  I'm talking about a fountain.  There was a fountain of water shooting out of the toilet.  I tell Little Brother he isn't going anywhere until we get the water turned off and some of the mess cleaned up.  Little Brother turned the water off.  I threw some towels down.  Right about this time Francisco shows up.  Francisco is hot.  He walks into our house and sees me in rain boots, cut-offs, a wife beater, and yellow scrub gloves.  I looked hot.  (Seriously no.  Not hot at all.) 

As Little Brother is explaining the situation to Francisco water starts shooting from the toilet again.  This is impossible because the water has been turned off.  All of sudden I see soap bubbles in the water.  The water coming out of the toilet is somehow the water from the washing machine.  Little Brother and I scream, "Turn it off!"  We were actually screaming at each other but Francisco thought we were yelling at him so he ran upstairs to turn the washing machine off.  Poor guy.

In a closet in the garage I found seven mops and four of those squeegee type things with long handles.  This made me think that the owners of the house had most likely had a similar problem to the one we were having sometime in the past.  The Mommy called right in the middle of us squeegeeing the floor.  I told her the dilemma.  I also told her she paid way too much freaking rent to live with this shit.  She said, "Quit your bitchin',  I'm eating lobster and will call you back when you're in a better mood."

For two hours we mopped and squeegeed water out of the house.  WATER THAT CAME OUT OF THE TOILET.  Because of the Mexican tile it just kept spreading.  It was hellatious.  I kept making towel dams.  And yes, there was stuff floating in the water.  Not big stuff that was easily identified as shit but stuff that could have been shit or dirt or coconut particles.  The boys kept making sure some of the "probably filled with shit" water kept splashing on me.  When most of the water was gone out the backdoor Little Brother and Francisco left to go play golf.  As they were leaving Roxy thought it would be a good idea to roll around in the dirty water we had squeegeed out on the patio.  Little Brother said, "Have fun washing her."  They left me to deal with the dirty dog and the plumber.

THEY LEFT ME DIRTY AND DRESSED LIKE A CRAZY PERSON TO DEAL WITH A PLUMBER WHO SPOKE NO ENGLISH!

THEY WENT TO PLAY GOLF AND DRINK BEER!

Eventually the owner of the house showed up.  He confirmed my suspicions that there had been problems with the toilet before.  He said that whenever it rained really hard for a day or two the half-bath backed up from the street.  Nice.  How about fixing your goddamn house before you rent it out to people? 

Later in the evening The Mommy called me.  She apologized for being rude earlier.  She thought I was being a drama queen but had since learned that the house had indeed been flooded with shit or dirt or coconut shell pieces.  I'm not sure why she would think that I would be overly dramatic about any sort of problem I might be having?  I find it quite weird in fact.

So to recap, while the old folks were on vacation Little Brother and I managed to go through two air-conditioners and a toilet.  Two Oriental rugs and a couch were ruined.  For the six months the house was rented nothing went wrong until Little Brother and I were left alone to fend for ourselves.  The only thing The SAM said about any of it was, "You two just can't be left alone."  We also learned that Little Brother thinks you can fix anything by throwing some towels down.

Comments

[e]

Oh the joy of younger siblings. Why is it things go wrong when parents are gone? No matter your age, if they leave you in charge something will be broken or destroyed.

[Rach]

Trust that stuff to happen when the parents are away. At least your mum and you made up, probably until they saw the damage, lol.