When you live in an apartment, sometimes things happen that you can't control. And at times when you'd rather not deal with them. Like after 11 p.m. on a Monday night.
Let me set the stage. I'd been gone every night for the preceding week for basketball games and then most of the day on Saturday for the state wrestling duals. Sunday was church, and Monday is production. I "love" Mondays. I'd gone to work relatively early and had a district basketball game Monday night to get to, come back and write up for Wednesday's paper. So far, so good - just exhausting. So by the time I got done on Monday, I was just ready to go home and go to bed.
Alas, it was not to be.
I observed the first clue when I opened the front door to my apartment building. I could see water standing on the floor in the laundry room at the bottom of the stairs. My heart immediately sank into my shoes. I've seen that before, and it means problems in my apartment.
I unlocked the door and walked across my living room to the lamp. As I stepped next to the lamp to turn it on, I heard "squish." Never a good sound when you're on carpet. Sure enough, in the light I could see wet carpet and water standing in the kitchen. I've had this happen before but not this late in the day. I crossed the kitchen to check the sink, and sure enough, there was gunk in it I didn't recognize. Someone had put too much in their garbage disposal, and when that happens, it ends up in my kitchen sink. Then nasty, dirty water fills the sink, overflows and runs across the kitchen. If it's not stopped, it hits the living room. Since I wasn't home all day, it wasn't stopped.
Of course, I couldn't leave my kitchen a lake. I got out the mop and bucket and started sopping up the water. There was nothing I could do with the carpet - I don't have a shop vac and it was way too late to call my landlord. I tried to clean the gunk out of the sink, but the water drained very, very slowly. In fact, there was still water standing in the sink when I got up the next morning. Gross! Yuck! And disgusting!
So today, I took the opportunity to shampoo that section of my carpet. I'd never operated a Rug Doctor before today, but I can check it off my list now. I think my apartment smells a little better today than it did yesterday when it smelled like water that had been standing for some time. I can still smell that stale water smell occasionally, so I'm waiting for a nice day to leave my windows open and air everything out.
Ah, the joys of an apartment. I was just glad I hadn't taken my shoes off when I came in the door.
