The longest toilet belch ever

My weekend guests can attest to the annoying hilarity of my toilet's newest personality quirk — a post-flush belch that rattles the entire building's pipes and, no doubt, signals the impending doom of a plumbing disaster waiting to happen.

This all got started Friday night when I got a voicemail from my maintenance dude telling me not to flush between 9:30 and 10:30 a.m. on Saturday morning because he and a plumber would be doing some work on my downstairs neighbor's pipeage. Easy enough, I figured, since I try not to get out of bed before 11 on Saturdays.

So Saturday morning, of course, I found myself up and flitting about around 9 a.m., cleaning up for my guests who'd be arriving later that night. I used the bathroom a couple of times but sat there chanting don't flush, don't flush, don't flush, don't flush, don't flush, don't flush, don't flush, don't flush as I relieved myself.

As requested, I did not flush between 9:30 and 10:30. 11:30 rolled around and, needing to clean the bathroom, I figured it would be okay to flush, since I gave them an extra hour. It was, apparently, NOT OKAY, as several minutes later, as I was sitting on the couch, eating a sandwich, my toilet flushed itself and did not stop flushing for twenty minutes.

I had, evidently, created a vacuum with my flush because they weren't done with their plumbing work. So my toilet was on continuous-flush mode until the maintenance guy and the plumber came in and dinked with my pipes.

But since their dinking, my toilet has done this weird thing after you flush it — it burps and makes all the pipes shudder and moan. You can hear it EVERYWHERE.

Tonight, friends, just now, after I flushed, my toilet let off the most horrific, long, nerve-jangling belch yet. It lasted a good five seconds. So long that I didn't think it was going to stop.

This has gone from funny to scary to JESUS PLEASE MAKE IT STOP in mere hours.