What do you do with the crumbles?

September 14, 2011 at 6:20 pm ("I hear mumbles and grumbles...")

I own two shower-worthy towels. One is the towel I brought from America. A quick-dry, REI towel, which I consider to be one of the top 5 items I brought with me to Ukraine. It is unfortunately sitting in Donetsk in my friend’s apartment at the moment, because I forgot I left it getting its quick-dry on on her bathroom door, as I usually do every third trip or so. My second towel is your average, $7, Walmart economy-buy, bathroom towel, presented to me by my host-mother on my 23rd birthday.

Other than those 2 body-sized towels, I have:

1. A hand towel that used to be blue.
2. A slightly larger than hand towel sized towel given to me by my school when I moved into this apartment but only used on the most dire occasions, because back when I had a dog (remember that?) I tried to clean her paws and the mud never, ever, ever came out of the towel. I am a failure at hand washing.
3. An “oven” towel. (I use quotes, because this towel was erroneously arranged on my oven door when I first moved in. Of course, I assumed it was fit for pulling things out of the oven, given its initial location, but after about 2 weeks, and one somewhat hazardous experience, I realized that the “oven” towel melted, and occasionally caught on fire, if it touched anything over 200 degrees.)

Why the linen list? Because I want you to understand the full extent of my frustration today as I realized my kitchen sink has sprung a leak and there were only a limited number of ways I could clean-up the mess.

(I am loath to use the towels, because they are basically unsafe for human use once they touch my floor. Like I said, I suck at hand washing. And don’t you dare say I should’ve used paper towels. I think I have seen paper towels twice in this country. And the TP is brown and maybe made of recycled cardboard. Certainly cheap enough to buy in large quantities, but not ideal for wiping up large puddles on my rough kitchen floor.)

At first, I thought I had somehow sloshed the dirty dish water over the edge. Then I noticed the puddle had taken over the absolutely disgusting excuse for a rug that has been nailed to my kitchen floor. Yes, nailed. So what can I do with a sopping wet corner of a rug that cannot be removed from the floor?

I have no idea. A hairdryer, maybe?

But anyways, I was willing to sacrifice only 2 of my ragtag team of towels. The mud towel and the oven towel. They have taken care of the problem for the moment, but I know this will require some remonting, and I dread having to explain this to my school tomorrow morning.

My school’s response to apartment repairs has, in the past, involved demanding that the school janitors fix things for me. It took me about 6 months to understand that they actually, quite vehemently, hate helping me. After coming to this conclusion on my own—when they refused my chocolate chip cookies, specifically baked for them—it was confirmed by my counterpart this summer, who told me that we will wait a few months to ask them to fix my running toilet. (The balloon broke off. I don’t know its official name, but I think you understand me. In the meantime, if the water is on, it flows through my toilet.)

I’ve mentioned before that it’s the little things in Ukraine that get me. Today, my apartment is one large collection of little things. Usually, I can ignore them. Tackle one of them at a time. But now, being ever so close to finally shedding this apartment, I am more conscious than ever of its flaws.

Let me say, as I know for some person out there such a disclaimer is necessary, that I have seen volunteers with both much worse and much better living situations than I.  I do not aim to compare. I am speaking only of my own experiences, my own complaints.

My kitchen and living/bedroom are concrete floors. In both of them, nails stick up randomly. I have apparently, unconsciously, modified my walking patterns to the point that I never step on these nails. Which means they don’t exist. But I have a friend, who every single time he has been here, has run into them. They are only ever nailed back into the floor when he visits.

The foyer, to be fancy, has been covered with linoleum. Unfortunately, there is about 1 nail per large strip of the fake floor, and each layer rests on top of the other with an open gap welcoming dirt, dust and my toes.

I tried to fix this problem by putting a rug on top of the linoleum. The rug was given to me by the director of my school, but I think she forgot that it was an outside rug, meant only for outside, like an outside voice. It must have been sitting on a pile of dirt for years. Each time I sweep the foyer, I must lift the rug and witness the depth of my own laziness. This rug needs to be taken outside to be beat, but I don’t have the courage to see what kind of mess is underneath more than just the edges of it. I’ll pretend like it’s not there for another 2 months.

The walls of my apartment are white, but this is not because they were painted with white house paint. I am 84% certain that my apartment walls were painted with the same white goodness that covers the bottom fourth of all trees, and objects shaped like trees, around Easter in Ukraine. The white stuff that fades after about 3 months, leaving the trees and posts looking like some very bored children ran out of spray paint. In my apartment, this means if you so much as graze your shoulder against the wall you will leave with a little part of my dwelling. A gift from the apartment gods.

But my foyer, man, did they fix it up. Along with the haphazardly lain linoleum, the walls have been wallpapered. This is the common choice of wall color in Ukraine. My counterpart explained that this is the only way to hide the cracks in a wall. This didn’t mean much to me, until about a year ago when I noticed that the wall was falling out of the wallpaper. There was a serious crack to cover. But really, this entire apartment building is maybe 3 years from crumbling down on top of my first floor locale.

Almost daily, the pile of wall rubble collects itself on the opposite side of my bathroom. If you jump near the wall, if you lay your bag against the wall, if the neighbors upstairs repair something, the wall will crumble down. I eventually got brave enough to explore, and realized that there is a significant crater underneath the wallpaper.

I noticed this about the same time my bathtub started flooding the bathroom. Much like my kitchen sink today, I spent a few days wondering if I was really that clumsy in the shower. Then I realized that the water was pooling on the back side of the tub, and the tub is molded into the wall, so the water wasn’t splashing over the edges, it was flowing from the pipes.

After closer inspection, I discovered that the wall in the foyer that is crumbling also crumbles on its opposite side, underneath the tub. And in the closet on the other side of the tub, enough wall debris has crumbled to build maybe 20 bricks, or whatever you build with building crumbles.

I considered this to be an imminent problem, and I told my school directly of the issue at hand. They asked if it was a problem for me. I said, “Well, I guess not. As long as the wall doesn’t fall down, I’m ok. I just sweep it up every 4 days or so. I guess I can keep on doing what I was doing.” And they said, “Great, ‘cuse we don’t really have the money to fix that right now.”

But what I really, really hate is that when I try to sweep up the wall mound in the foyer (the only one of the three piles of crumbles I bother with, because it’s the only that visitors can see), I have to lift up the edge of the dirt rug, thus witnessing my aforementioned laziness. And then, one of the linoleum seams is centered right in the middle of the rubble. So, I am basically sweeping the wall under the linoleum, and anything that doesn’t fit goes into the trashcan.

Today is Wednesday, and so far my internet has cut off 7 times this week. One of those days it was non-existent for over 24 hours, despite the fact that I pay for monthly, unlimited access at a price that probably no one else in this town is willing to shell out (about $15 a month). As a matter of fact, as I was typing this post, my internet cut off. Turing it back on involves restarting my computer, and more often than I like, calling the owner of the internet company. My water has been shut off mid-day 3 times, the electricity was out for approximately 4 hours, and I went through 9 matches in one attempt to light my gas stove to make tea. Did I mention it’s only Wednesday?

I can’t wait to get out of this apartment.