I try to be a good neighbor, I really do.

I go out of my way to take care of my stuff, I don't borrow things and I make an effort to be neighborly when called upon, as long as it doesn't put me out too much, because sometimes people will just screw you if you let them.

Anyway, during the Great Fire of '05, I met my upstairs neighbors, and for awhile, it seemed like I wouldn't be able to resume my pre-fire level of anonymity without being unnecessarily rude; but eventually, things settled down, they got back to their drinking and creditor avoidance, and I resumed my busy schedule of naps and cartoons.

Until today, when neighbor Female knocked on my door.

Now, neighbor F is asthmatic, overweight, smokes and lives on the fourth floor, so it takes her awhile to get up the stairs. And when she knocked on my door and asked if she could use my bathroom, I said sure, because it would have seemed cruel, not to mention unhygenic, to make her wait, and I think we have all been in the situation where we need a bathroom STAT.

She was in there for about five minutes, although I wasn't paying too much attention, because I was on the ihatedialysis.com board. But boy, did I pay attention when she came out.

The door opened and a smell that was as foul a smell as I had ever come across wafted out of the bathroom and immediately permeated every corner of the apartment. When I say that it was a cross between rotten meat, dead animal and desiccated plant life, I am only touching the surface of the dastardly effect of this smell.

Neighbor F stopped to talk to me on her way out, and it was all I could do not to shriek "Jesus, woman, what in the hell happened in there?" As it was, I quickly got her out of the house, and then cautiously crept back to investigate the bathroom.

If I thought the smell was bad in the rest of the apartment, it was damned near overpowering in the bathroom itself. I quickly set up a Glade air fan thing, turned on the overhead fan and opened all the windows.

Then I retreated to the farthest corner of the apartment to consider my options.

I ended up putting Vicks under my nose, a la every cop show ever watched on TV, and then easing back into the bathroom.

The smell even overcame the Vicks.

I ended up doing a full on bleach sterilization of the toilet and surrounding environs, washing the rugs, and changing the TP, because the TP and the rugs I just couldn't get the smell out of. Dude, I am SO not kidding.

Actually, I do know what the smell reminded me of.

Once, many years ago, my Aunt Patsy brought her new husband into town in an RV, with their combined 4 kids. Now Gus, my aunt's husband's name is Gus, wanted to empty the sewage tank on the RV. My mom told him he couldn't just empty it into a toilet, he had to find a station to empty it at.

But Gus, who knows he is smarter than everyone else, decided to empty it in my parents' downstairs bathroom. The resulting explosion cost a bunch of money to clean up and created a permanent rift between my folks and Gus.

And it smelled just like my bathroom this afternoon.

AHHH, good times.