not so smurftastic

Remember long ago when I blogged about smurfs? (Of course you don't remember...it was over 3 years ago, haha!)

Well, I'm lookin pretty smurfy this very moment. My fingers are blue! So are a little bit of my forearms and some splatters on my knee. Also blue is my bathroom floor and mat. It is like a smurf exploded in my tiny toilet room.

Here's the story: I've been away from my mini-home for the last 8 days. Housesitting. I got back today after work around 6:45 p.m. and noticed that my toilet looked GROSS. Now, I keep a pretty clean house--I have a spray bottle of bleach always nearby in the bathroom and kitchen, am constantly wiping up surfaces, and am clutter's worst enemy. There was no reason for my toilet to look so gross, and even worse, it was unnaturally gross-looking, not just your average dirty-toilet-grossness. Greenish brown water and scummy. (I know, disgusting, sorry, but I promise it's not grossness due to, umm, human waste. Keep reading.) So I instantly flushed the toilet and reached for the spray bottle and scrub brush and the mucky water started flowing out of crevices I didn't even know a toilet had! Eeeep! Not over the top of the seat like when you need a plunger, but like a leaky roof coming through the seams.

So, I opened the tank lid and prepared for the worst. This is SO not my favorite kind of adventure. I deduced that the culprit must be the the two little tablets of blue and white automatic cleaner I put in there a month-ish ago. Y'know, this:


Disaster! While fishing around in the tank of murky greenish brownish-ness (YUCK!), I found a little sliver of the white tablet remaining and threw that away. No sign of the dark blue one except for the odd consistency and color of the water. My scientific hypothesis is that it did not dissolve correctly and that is the source of my problem. Too bad I'm not still in college; I could write a whole paper about this.


So, my remedy? I flushed and flushed and flushed. And flushed and flushed and flushed. And flushed. Trying to get the blue gunk all flushed away. (the neighbors must think I'm terribly ill right this evening! I didn't even consider that until just this second!) Eventually the water started running a bit clearer (running in the toilet bowl and, yes, still running seeping out the cracks. Hence my blue fingers as I tried to stop it up.)

The conclusion of this story? Don't buy 2000 Flushes Blue Plus Bleach! Actually, who am I to say? It might work out great on your potty. (yep, I said it. Potty.) In the past I've always loved these kind of things (as much as a person can love a toilet-cleaning-tablet, I suppose.) Maybe the mechanisms of my toilet in my new old mini-home are just too old to handle such high-tech products as automatic toilet cleaners. Bummer.


I really hope my fingers aren't still blue after a shower. I've scrubbed and scrubbed with fresh water and soap to no avail. It's not like their gross from the toilet---as they say at 2000flushesbrand.com, the blue is working on my fingers to "Kill Bacteria and Keep Your Bowl Sparkling Blue, Sanitary, and Deodorized."