Yay, more sleeping all day and feeling like crap. Not quite as bad as yesterday, but still nobody’s idea of fun unless they are a masochist.

In fact, the last 24 hours or so have been pretty fucking rough. There are times in you life where the Universe gangs up on you and makes it rain down misfortunes, and all you can do it hope you survive the flood with at least the majority of your marbles intact.

And in more or less the same order you left them in.

First, our Internet died. The connection was fine, but the DNS was dead. Could not find a single website in the world. As far as my Firefox was concerned, Google was a made up word I just typed into the address bar to mess with it. So, no outside connectivity.

This was at about 1:30 AM today. So I decided this was as good a time as any to have my late night popcorn snack, and wandered out to the living room. Julian was there, using our main computer, and I told him about the Internet problem.

(Just as an aside, it was during this problem that I realized sometime : Internet used to be a service, like cable. But increasingly, it’s a utility, like power. I am almost as confused about what to do with myself without Internet as I do when the lights go out. Sad but true.)

So Julian unplugged our router and our cable modem box so they would reset, and when we plugged them back in, everything worked again. So, yay Julian! He saved me from the horror of having to watch normal cable TV instead of glorious Netflix for an enter fifteen minutes!

It was sad. Me, who was practically raised by television, had almost forgotten how the damn thing worked. I have been so spoiled by the Internet that I found myself just staring at the television for like five seconds before I could start thinking “Oh right… switch to the cable box channel… and um… grab the other remote here… and then… choose a channel? That seems so arbitrary now… ”

But I muddled through, and Julian said he fixed it, so I was able to finish up with some lovely Netflix at last. Then I go to my room, expecting my Internet to be working, but no : then I see that the nice friendly two computer icon that represents the network in my System Tray has changed.

Instead of two computers, it is now one computer and a big red X. And that means only one thing : “A network cable has been unplugged. ”

Yes, in fixing our Internet, Julian had somehow unplugged my computer from the router. Joy! And by now, he was in bed, so I was on my own.

And I tried, I really did. I went back and forth between the router in the living room and my own computer in my bedroom like three or four times, but I could not make it work.

So then I had to wake up Julian and get him to fix it for me. He performed some arcane ritual he learned from previous times this had happened and voila, Internet. Yay! I could waste hours of my life playing Facebook games again.

But then I went to the bathroom.., or tried to. Because when I stepped onto the carpet in the little hallway leading to my bathroom, my foot went squish . and left a distinct footprint behind. Horrified dread overtook me, like in a horror movie when the person finds the first bloody footprint, then realizes a trail of them lead to a certain door…

So I squish my way to the bathroom, and yup. The bowl is full to the brim with filthy water, there’s more on the floor, and that is what I just squished through to get here. Lovely. The toilet overflowed.

And what is more, it managed to do that after I had left it with the bowl half-full and no sign that the water was flowing at all. That is a first for me. You cannot even turn your back on that god damned toilet when it is perfectly quiet. Fuck.

But then again, I was not in a great state of mind when I left the scene that time. You see, this all started with me havin a pretty severe attack of Irritable Bowl Syndrome cramping and whatnot, brought on by my nemesis, rice.

For supper, I had eaten some rice pilaf that I made recently, and looking back, I thoughtlessly ate it way too fast, which is a very bad thing to do with rice for me. My system has trouble handling it as is, wolfing it down only make it worse.

So that lead to a pretty bad attack of cramping, forcing me to sit on the bowl and sweat it out. Then when I thought I was done and had laid down as per usual when I have to recover from one of these attacks, another one came along and I had to go in again.

But I handled it pretty well, I must say. I kept my cool and did not freak out, just told myself that I knew what caused it, and it would, well, pass.

And predictably, when I was done the second time, everything was backed up toilet wise, and I did my best with he plunger to fix it, but after these attacks I usually need to lie down because they are, quite frankly, quite the punishing physical and emotional experience, so after tangling with it for a little while, I gave up, figuring I would finish the job when I felt better.

And I swear, I had no indication that water was still coming in to the bowl when I left it, or I would never have walked away.

Worst part is, I just could not handle the disaster myself. I get the feeling I just do not have what it takes to cope in a crisis. So I had to just tell Joe about it when he got home from work, and then he had to deal with my horrible mess for me, and I feel deeply ashamed of that. I really do not like making a mess that someone else has to clean up. Especially… well, that kind of mess.

So while he was cleaning stuff up, I was having a severe panic attack, feeling like absolute garbage and freaking out big time. So that was pretty bad too.

So it has not been a fun time for me lately. No wonder I slept all day.

I was afraid to wake up!