10 Things I Know to be True: Part 1 of, well, 10

A few nights ago, I was pacing around my kitchen while waiting for some water to boil. I know that a "watched pot never boils", ha ha, no seriously it doesn't, but that has never stopped me from doing it anyway. It's hard to estimate how many minutes I've wasted on boiling water, but it's the way I do things and I'm far too old to go changing now. Right, so I was pacing around the kitchen and it dawned on me that this would be an opportune time to BLOG, a thing I used to do often. Then fairly often. And then every three weeks if I found myself in the mood. What, you think this is easy? When you have an audience as large as mine (seven people), there's a lot of pressure to perform. Anyway, I opened up a blank blog page and typed, "10 Things I Know to be True" in the title bar. Yes, I thought to myself, and now I impart wisdom. 

And then it took me three tries to get my water to boil.

I wish I were kidding, but the whole cooking thing really turned into a process. I'm definitely not going to tell you why I had to boil water three different times, just know that I did. Also, I don't have to explain myself to you people because I'm proud of who I am!!! So in this extensive, am-I-cooking-or-am-I-just-hanging-out period of time, I typed out the first ten things that came to mind when thinking of absolute truths in my life. But Katie, let's examine how you define "absolute" in relation to your idea of "truth." Well, I hadn't thought that much about the list. I still haven't thought that much about the list. I'm pretty sure that by the time I actually get to the post about the tenth truth, the list will have changed dozens of times. The point, really, is that I never published that post about the things I know to be true, and it's because of (you guessed it) the water in pots one, two, and three.

I'm back tonight and slightly more focused so I figure I should address one of the items on my list. It's about the Rat who took up residence here two months ago and, apparently, hasn't left yet.

#8: When things go seriously wrong in my apartment, I won't know what to do.

I am a very capable person. I'm good at figuring out unfamiliar situations and I'm a pretty quick learner. In fact, my room mate told me just a few weeks ago that I have the face of someone not to be messed with, and that's probably why dudes don't continue to call after me after I give them initial Bitch Face. Great! I thought. Everybody's falling for it. Because guess what? I'm faking all of it and I'm faking it so you stop hitting on me, and so you don't feel afraid to be in this neighborhood, and so you trust that this will turn out okay. But when I'm by myself, I don't need to convince anybody of anything so that's when I freak the shit out over our struggling toilet. That's the connection to this item, by the way: the toilet and all other parts of our bathroom that were wheezing their last breaths of life. My room mate was out of town for a week so I just assumed that all of the things that could overflow were, in fact, going to overflow. And I wouldn't know what to do. From a renter's perspective, I believe the correct response is "Call your landlord." But that's not how my brain works. I wanted a logistical and immediate solution for the thing that hasn't happened yet. After thinking about it for way too long, I had nothing that remotely resembled a plan so I decided to just call it a night and go get a banana split. That's the other reason I didn't finish that blog post. I was eating a banana split.

I went to bed that night, because that's when people go to bed, and at around 6:30 the next morning I heard a noise that I immediately knew belonged to a rat. More specifically, Apartment Rat. Oh, right, the bathroom problems don't really come into play again. What's that rule? Put a gun in the first act, better shoot someone with it in the second? Well, I broke that rule because this story is about Apartment Rat, the other seriously wrong thing happening in the apartment that I don't know how to handle. So this noise wakes me up at 6:30, right? And I immediately knew that little bastard was back. I actually had a moment in which I figured out what I was going to say to him when I confronted him. I sat up in bed and put on my glasses and started a mental first draft of my Speech to Apartment Rat. Look, I just think it's really rude that you think you can just come in here whenever you want--and then I reminded myself it's a fucking rat. I instead barricaded my door as to not allow Apartment Rat access to my chambers. This is the exact same course of action I took two months ago when I was drunk at 5 am and building a rat blockade. I think that speaks volumes about the strength of my survivor instinct.

I got up an hour later (so I could live my life), and I made sure to creep into the dining room and sneak up on any remaining rodents. I didn't actually expect to see anything, or at least I don't think I did. So imagine my surprise when I saw something. That asshole rat had accomplished the following:

• Apartment Rat got into our apartment in spite of the various booby-traps we had set up for him. We knew he'd be back (they always come back) so we have steel wool stuffed in various structural holes, duct tape over base board openings, and glue traps just waiting for a catch. The plan was not fail proof, it is true, but we thought that we had taken a decent amount of the proper precautions against rat home invasion. 
• Apartment Rat ate our food. You do not pay rent here, Rat. You do not pay bills, you do not pay my loans, and you do not buy the groceries. So you think you can just come in here at any hour of the night and eat our food? You thought we would be "cool" with it? Like, "Oh, no, these girls call me Apartment Rat! We're friends! They let me crash here!" No, man. You took it too far this time. And I think you know that.
• Apartment Rat proceeded to drag said food from the dining room into the kitchen. In the process of this migration, Rat just straight up spilled crumbs and food particles everywhere. Like. Everywhere. And then Rat, because he is hilarious, must have done a god damn rat jig atop all the food particles (it was rice cakes, by the way) and ground everything into the carpet. 
• Apartment Rat didn't stop at the carpet. Oh no. He climbed on top of my coat and scarf, the very clothing items I wear every day, and rat-danced all over them with his rice cake covered paws (claws? feet? talons?) before rolling around in rice cake and making rice cake dust angels. On my coat. Do I have proof of this? If you think the palpable feeling of rat betrayal is proof, then my answer is yes. 

So do you know what I did? Because something was going seriously wrong in the apartment and this is the part I was dreading: the part where I had to do something. I did the only thing my limited skills allowed me to do: I wrote a Bitch Face email to my landlord that, after addressing the rat problem, ended with something to the effect of, "OH. And my bathroom is struggling. Let's fix that." And sure enough, I got home today to a totally rat-trapped apartment and the promise from an exterminator that his serious of devices will most definitely work this time. He says that when it "works" it will be "loud" and we will "know." I also came back to a bathroom with full functioning everything AND they fixed the dryer! Right, our dryer didn't work either. I addressed that in the email by saying "our clothes are hot and soaking wet and frankly it's disgusting."

And now I await Apartment Rat's return. Your move, buddy.

This is who we believe to be the culprit. He likes the Cubs, pizza, and messing up my life. 

I realize now that I kind of refuted my own truth by the end of this entry, a trend I really wasn't planning on starting. Don't worry everybody--if there's a gas leak I'm running and, more than likely, going to get a banana split. Unlit pilot lights don't know how to react to sassy emails.

Also, you should know that when I got home from work yesterday, Rat had been back during the day, finding more rice cakes and having his way with those, too. He's getting too confident and there is truly nothing worse than an arrogant rat. RIGHT LADIES?!?!

I agree. It's bed time.