Water level--Oh my God, everybody out, it's sink or swim.

I have perfectly rational fears: spiders, bees, moths mating with my marshmallows, being eaten alive by just about anything...

Then, I have a few irrational fears: fear of abandonment, claustrophobia in giant rooms with a lot of people, our really old vacuum cleaner that we don't actually have anymore, but was loud, and had a light on the head, and was generally a product of the 80s.

Then, there's the downright silly ones, that no one else in the world is afraid of, and hiding in the bathtub is not going to save me from them, no matter how hard I hide. These would be things like, a fear of black toilet seats (I don't know, this goes all the way back to when I was a kid - perhaps I was once eaten by one?), a fear of overflowing toilets (way to go, plumber's granddaughter, I bet you're making him real proud up there), a fear of the decorative pieces on the arms of our old couch, because they looked like tongues and I used to run screaming from the room if one came unstapled, and, you know, general fear of basements. Especially dark ones.

I bring this up, because one of our toilets got clogged today, and the water level was rising, and my voice was getting higher and higher in pitch as I told this to Ruy, and he told me I had to fix it myself. So, I did. But I stayed planted firmly in the bathtub while doing so.

Also, great tip for a clogged toilet? Pour a pail of water into said toilet very quickly. In a lot of cases, everything just goes right down. Which is great, because I don't think we own a plunger.