How was your Easter? Mine was, as today’s blog title suggests, pretty sh#t.
Actually, there was nothing pretty about it … there was just lots of sh#t.
I woke in the early hours of Easter Thursday feeling crook as Rookwood. Absolutely horrendous. Unspeakably awful.
Self-diagnosis: gastroenteritis.
The next 24 hours passed in a terrible blur of tottering between the bathroom and bed.
Three times a day I would gird my loins for a torturous walk down three flights of stairs and around the block with the dogs so they could do a wee.
On Friday afternoon I wobbled to the car and drove the dogs to DD’s place to be minded, as we were meant to be going away.
Remember how I had accommodation booked for Bluesfest and decided not to go after the festival was cancelled?
I never found anyone to take over the booking. But the irony is that I couldn’t have gone anyway, as I was bedridden the whole time …
But the dog sitters were still booked to mind the fur babies while we went to Port Stephens instead.
Well, not exactly instead. A getaway with my sister and friends had been organised long before Bluesfest reared its ugly head with its false promise of a Split Enz concert.
So, when Plan B went into liquidation, we fell back on Plan A. Except I was too crook for any plans, but DD’s house needed to be vacated for the dog sitters, who were looking forward to their Easter break on the Northern Beaches.
I met them (contactlessly, with lots of hand sanitizer, just to be on a safe side), gave some limp, garbled instructions, then DD and I decamped to my place to wait for my bug to pass.
On Sunday, we stopped hoping for a miracle recovery and resolved to make a move while I was still poorly but no longer contagious.
Unfortunately, the universe – and the sh#t – wasn’t finished with me yet.
There had been a weird leak in the back garden for a few days that I had been too sick to do anything about other than wanly photograph and send to the building manager for awareness.
A work order was issued for the following Tuesday after the tenant two floors below me reported that his toilets and sinks were blocking up.
Then I noticed the garden leak was starting to smell funny and had what looked like bits of toilet paper in it …
On Sunday morning, I opened my garage door and discovered smelly water leaking from pipes in the roof in several places.
I hastily shut the garage door again and escalated the issue with the building manager in a new, more urgently worded email.
One hour later … Frank the tenant returned home to find his entire apartment flooded with sewage. Ewwwwww. The smell was unbelievable.
It was now lunchtime on Easter Sunday.
Luckily I had the phone number for the plumber who’d been booked for Tuesday and miraculously he agreed to be there within the hour.
I don’t even want to think about how much that call out cost.
Tree roots had blocked a pipe in the backyard and absolute carnage had unfolded. He got his electric eel thingy down there and earned every cent of his fee. Grey sh#t was spewing out of that drain in all directions.
(Let’s not dwell on how much I may have personally contributed to that over the previous few days …)
DD and I ran away soon afterwards and I’ve been lying wanly on sofas and beds in our holiday apartment ever since, interspersed with the occasional soothing swim.
The upside is I’ve made an awesome start on losing the 10kg the doctor tasked me with shedding over the next three months.
Meanwhile Frank is wondering how long it will be before his apartment is habitable again.
Poor Frank.
No song of the day. Still too wrecked to rock.
housegoeshome 
Leave a comment