Being an adult tanks (literally)

One of the most frightening moments you can have while learning to adult is when something bad happens and you realize you are the one who needs to take charge of the situation.

For example:

The other day I literally cut myself with a butter knife while cutting butter. Before the pain really resonated, I just looked at my finger kind of dumbstruck and asked myself “WHO does this? Who let you live by yourself? Where are my adults?” and as I bled onto my grilled cheese, I realized I was my adult, and it was up to me to find my bandaids and clean myself up. Eating grilled cheese is less fun if it's accompanied by a game of "is that blood or is that ketchup?".

I have found that most of my adult revelations seem to happen in the kitchen. Preparing meals, no matter how remedial the recipe may be, (as long as it has two or more ingredients and involves more then a carton of ice-cream and a spoon, it is cooking) is a very adult like thing to do. It also results in more adult-like activities: dishes.

There is not a more sobering moment than coming to the realization that even though you made the food, you also have to clean it up. Gone are the days of chore charts and trading off responsibilities with your family members. You live by yourself now. You chose this life.

It is the cosmic joke of adulthood: if you want to eat, you have to clean it up, and so is the circle of life. Because of this, living in an apartment without a dishwasher can be difficult, especially for me. There has been many a time I’ve looked at the growing pile of dishes threatening to start a revolution in my sink and thought “Well, I guess it’s time to load the dishwasher” only to remember that I am the dishwasher and revise it to “Well, I guess it’s time to get loaded and do the dishes.”

This is not to say that my kitchen is in a constant state of chaos. I am actually quite a tidy person for the most part. But I am not perfect, and since I work and otherwise have a small bit of a life, things can pile up. So far I haven't had anything grow on my plates to the point where it’s been able to stand up, look me in the eye, and tell me that it refuses to live in this kind of environment, and that I need to do the dishes and stop using tupperware lids as plates. (Except for that really disturbing dream that one time. But that is why you don’t eat spicy food before bed.)

Speaking of foods that fight back, lets take a quick side bar to talk about onions. 

Onions are delicious and diabolical and, as an adult, my vegetable nemesis. I have always pawned  off the duty of onion cutting to whoever was closest to me in the kitchen. I am a big baby and my  eyes are just way too sensitive to deal with the devil magic that onions produce. I have tried everything. Onion goggles, chewing mint gum while cutting, using the sharpest knife, singing the alphabet backwards while standing on one foot and virgin sacrifices. Nothing works, and there is no Visine for that. 

The last time I had a dinner party and was cutting onions, it ended in me having to be led up the stairs by the hand to have my eyes flushed out with water. That and a hilarious stream of snapchats.

That's right fellas, all this could be yours.

Not all adult realizations happen in the kitchen though! Not so long ago, after an extremely taxing day of work followed by missing my bus, I came home to the irritatingly familiar sound of my toilet running. Really? You say. That doesn’t sound so bad, a mild annoyance to be sure, but there are worse things. Yes, dear reader, you are right. There are worse things. So I breathed a heavy sigh and climbed my stairs with my horror-cats trying to trip me at every step. I may have lived a sheltered life thus far, but I know how to jiggle a handle and pray to the porcelain gods for the noise to stop. 

Now, in defence of my reaction, I would like to reiterate that it had been a very long and very hard day, I had had very little sleep in the preceding few weeks, and I had also missed my first bus home (which meant waiting for an extra 40 minutes on a relatively cool night with a full bladder.) When I realized my full bladder might have to remain full for the rest of the night --   a damn eternity -- I snapped.

When my ritual jiggling of the handle did nothing, I popped off the top to do some sleuthing. Only then did I realize the issue. The wand and bulb portion of the inner mechanics of the toilet (the thingies that flush) had become detached and were just floating about listlessly in the toilet tank. Remember when I said there were worse things? Well, what's worse then a noisy toilet? A noisy broken toilet. So I rolled up my sleeves, and fished it out of the tank. The toilet was running louder than a jet intake, the cats were ripping at the carpet under the door clawing to get in, and at the sight of myself distressed and holding a limp dirty piece of toilet, I promptly burst into ugly snot faucet tears.

It was at this point, after the phone calls to the landlord and the apartment owners were made and the frantic messages had been left, that I did what any sort-of-adult would do in my situation. I called my friends. The first phone call went to my quasi-roommate/neighbour and, as she was fast asleep at the time, the message she woke to the next morning sounded something like this:

[the following are accurate transcriptions of actual phone calls]

“So I finally made it home after the longest shift of my life and the toilet is fucking broken! It sounds like a jet is trying to take off in my bathroom!!” 

*heavy breathing*

“ALL I WANTED TO DO WAS PEE!”

*audible gulping*

“And now I am having a mental breakdown over a toilet! What is my life? Well, if you wake up and someone is in your apartment, using your bathroom, don’t be alarmed. It’s just me relieving my bladder as I haven't had time to pee since 4pm and its now...12. No wonder you're asleep. It’s too drafty out to pee on the front lawn. Plus, I’m a lady. Kind of.”

*manic giggle*

“Well I’m going to go sob over my broken toilet now, because that’s where I’m at. Yay adulting.”

[The next phone call went to my Best Chum, whom, by the way, had already received a phone call from me earlier that night. What a lucky duck she is.]

Chummy: "Hello again."

Me: *whimpers pathetically and wipes nose on sleeve*

Chummy: "So your night has improved, then."

*Launches into explanation of what happened since getting home*

Me: "I think you become an adult when you are more emotionally moved by broken appliances than by books or movies. This is the saddest story I have ever seen."

Chummy: "What, you or the toilet?"

Me: "Both."

Though the toilet of terror has since been repaired (which, by the way, was no small feat.) It has definitely taught me two things about Adult Teagan and life:

One: I am not a lady.

Two: Your crotch is no place for mosquito bites.