On Habits

I try to stifle my coughs and I try to avoid flushing the toilet here at night. Both instincts are self-trained and entirely unnecessary now, but it's very hard for me to overcome these impulses.

I try not to cough because our dog, Aggie, trained herself to come when I cough. I wish I could say this was the result of a diligent training effort on our part, but no, she's entirely responsible. In fact, it took us a while to realize that she was doing it. Once we finally figured it out, a quick test proved that it's the most "obediant" thing she does. (Me: "HACK. HACK." And here comes Aggie)

I have no idea why she decided that she should come when I cough. It's as mysterious as why she prefers to carry her rawhides in and out of the house instead of chewing them, taking care of them as if they were scrawny offspring. If one is outside, she has to fetch it at least daily, bring it on a tour of the apartment, and then bring it back outside. This happens several times a day (especially annoying in the winter, when you have to leave the door open while the rawhide child is being shown the apartment. Brrrrr.)

She doesn't come when Bobby coughs, just me. It's cute, but it makes me feel bad if I didn't particularly want to see her. Say I'm lying in bed and she's in the living room, half-asleep. If I cough or even clear my throat a bit, she gets up and comes in with a "You rang?" attitude reminiscent of Lurch from the Addams Family. It can be useful if I actually want her. But mostly I have to struggle to avoid her hearing me cough (pillows are helpful here), or she'll get up and come trotting over and I'll feel bad for "ordering" her to do so.

So when I'm here, you would think I could cough in peace, but I have built up such a strong resistance to coughing that almost every time I feel like coughing, I have to go through the same drawn-out thought process: "Oh dear, I have to cough. I wish I could cough, but I can't because—oh wait. She's in another hemisphere and can't possible hear me. Yay! I can cough. HACK!"

Same thing goes on now with the toilet. One of the "charming" traits of the apartment is the surprisingly loud plumbing groan that the toilet makes every time it flushes. It's an old-time water tank with a pull cord, and the sound is not immediate. Something occurs a minute or two after flushing as the tank is refilling. A slow moan builds to a aching, reverberant groan, eventually reaching a deep hollow scream of plumbing sorrow.


Or at least it used to. Something happened and it's better now. I asked Héctor if he fixed it and he said he didn't do anything. There's a clue, though, which has to do with not knowing what goes on in my own apartment when it's rented out to strangers.

At least I'm convinced it's a clue: The toilet seat is broken. One of the hinges is snapped.

Now, the seat isn't anywhere near the tank, so that has nothing directly to do with the death of the toilet's scream, but how did it break? I figure you'd have to be putting in some pretty heavy time opening and closing the toilet seat to snap a metal hinge. Seems very unlikely to me. But if you were, say, standing on the toilet seat to try to reach the water tank and fix the toilet's inevitable, sorrowful groan because it was driving you crazy—especially in the middle of the night— you might easily have torqued the lid in the wrong way as you were reaching for the tank and snapped the hinge. (See photo. But the water tank isn't as tiny as the lens makes it look–I had to go wide angle to get the shot.) (I know, I know, what am I thinking, putting pictures of my Buenos Aires toilet on my blog? I was also standing in our big, claw-footed bathtub to get this picture, if you want even more information. No?)


So that's my guess. I think one of our tenants did just that. And maybe we should thank him (they've mostly been men, and it's easier to imagine a man trying that repair anyway) for breaking the seat, because he fixed the groan. And really, the seat is easier to replace than the groan was to fix.

So now, the toilet is nearly silent and I can flush whenever I like. But I don't. At night, I have the same habit-built instincts, reinforced by sleepiness. My thought process remains stubbornly ingrained: "I wish I could flush the toilet, but it's late and I don't want to wake the neighbors, or myself for that matter, with the sobbing toilet. Better leave it til morning." And often I do.

All of which is just to say that old habits die hard. But also that I kind of miss our moaning water tank. I feel a little anticipatory "will it come buck?" with each flush, but so far, nada.

And while I'm here I certainly miss Aggie's fuzzy and possibly annoyed face looking at me, saying: "You coughed?"