Ever have one of those days when everything that can go wrong does? We here at MojoFiction would like to officially call that day Tuesday … and Wednesday. Okay, fine, let’s go ahead and throw Monday in there, too.
MONDAY NIGHT
We tried to go to sleep at a reasonable hour on Monday night because Tuesday happened to be the one day of the entire year that we had to be at the office, no excuses. That’s because MojoFiction works at a broker-dealer and a regulatory agency was dropping by for a friendly visit and we’re the Chief Compliance Officer. We won’t bore you with the details of the industry because it tends … to … make … zzzzzzz. Oops, sorry, we drooled a little on the keyboard.
So we had just turned off all the lights, crawled into bed, and felt sleep was imminent, when, somewhere in the back of our sleepy mind, we recognized a quiet sound.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Great.
We slunk out of bed and, after a brief hunt, we discovered that the toilet in the half-bathroom on the main floor was happily dripping away into the laundry room below it. The great thing about this discovery was the added bonus of realizing that the drip was not coming directly out of a plumbing fixture, but from the sub-flooring, which meant that the wood was most likely saturated with … liquids — and that could be a much bigger problem.
Of course, being manly, we wanted nothing more than to immediately tear that bathroom up and see the extent of the damage and fix it immediately with our manly skills. But it’s a hard-wood floor and that would entail removing the toilet and tearing up the floor boards, which would be a loud and time-consuming job and we had to be awake for work the next day. Also, we didn’t have any tools, which probably isn’t that manly (so don’t tell anyone). We ended up turning off the water to the bathroom (+1 man-point for knowing how) and going to sleep (+3 man-points for laziness-but-with-a-totally-viable-excuse). Only we couldn’t sleep because all we could think about was that stupid bathroom. So we went in to work on Tuesday bleary-eyed and grumpy.
TUESDAY
The day went by quickly thanks to the stress of the regulators. They wrapped-up by telling us they’d be in touch with the official word about how badly we were screwed. Than we informed our boss that we were taking a personal day Wednesday to do things with our toilet and, while we probably shouldn’t have worded it that way, we went home immediately and got to work.
TUESDAY NIGHT
You know what the staff at MojoFiction hates? Wax rings. We’ve removed a toilet before, but somehow we never pull up that wax ring properly and we always smoosh gross-looking waxy stuff all over the place. This wax ring was particularly gross and we had to burn the rubber gloves we wore while removing it. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do anything else because of the aforementioned lack of tools, so we made some dinner and watched reruns of NCIS (+8 man-points for owning a large flat-screen TV). But the day couldn’t end without our body reminding us of our chronic cough.
We’ve had this enjoyable cough for the past 6 weeks. We thought it was going away, but, like the Transformers movies, just when you think you’re out, they make another sequel. So we made a note to call the doctor’s office in the morning. Then we stayed up late playing Skyrim because, what the heck, we weren’t going into the office the next day.
WEDNESDAY
We made an appointment with the doctor for the afternoon. Then we headed out to Sears to buy tools. We bought:
Circular Saw
Miter Saw
Saw Horse
Sea Horse
Seesaw
Ear Plugs
Pry Bar
Safety Glasses
Chisel
Light Bulb (for a different project, but we broke the bulb immediately after arriving at home and we don’t know why we’re telling you this…)
Then we went home and started sawing into the wood planks and pulling them up. It wasn’t pretty underneath and we took a photo to show our co-workers, but we won’t show you because this is a family website. But it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, so we’re letting it dry out before cleaning it up and putting new wood down this weekend, which we think is a fantastic way to spend Labor Day. Really @#$!ing fantastic. Then, of course, there was the matter of the cough.
We walked into the doctor’s office figuring it would be one of those ironic times when you can’t cough to save your life, even though you “have a cough.” Of course, that’s exactly what happened. The receptionist politely asked for the co-pay up front, in case we didn’t make it out alive. We obliged and the doc called us in. After a series of tests the doctor politely informed us that he had no idea what the deal was, but here, take some drugs and enjoy life. Actually, he suspected allergies, but also a possible nasal issue causing dripping down our throat. And he did prescribe some Claritin and asked us to come back in a week. Then he asked us if we’d let him teach a lesson to his new assistant using our mystery cough condition. The young assistant was strangely enthusiastic about seeing what was wrong with people up close and happy to agree out loud with all the weird things going on in my cough-ridden throat as the doctor shined in a light and asked everyone in the world to take a look and comment.
THE CHERRY ON TOP
The weekend isn’t here yet, so we still have bathroom work to look forward to. But just after we got home from work this evening, we realized we forgot to pay the local water bill. It was due today.
Their office closed two hours before we got home and now we have to pay the “past due” amount.
Happy Labor Day!
MojoFiction 
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