Away goes troubles down the drain!

Hello readers! Just thought I would let you know that today this site reached 2000 views! I can’t even imagine how many of these views were from my mom (Hi Mom!) but either way, it is pretty cool.

On to more important matters….

I promised a story about a sewage pipe and I know y’all are dying to hear about poop so here I go.

A week ago Saturday, my husband had some friends and family over to watch a UFC fight. I left with Mo (Hi Mo!) to go see a movie because I can not stand UFC fighting and neither can Mo. I don’t understand the fascination with men in spandex wrestling each other until one of them dies or “taps out”. It seems a little gay, even though these guys are like the testosterone driven anti-gay type.

Also joining my husband and Jeff for homo-erotic man’s night was my brother in law Scott (Hi Scott!) Scott is a great guy, he is responsible, opinionated and set in his ways – just like me – so we get along fine. Scott however, does not generally like sports. Yet for some reason, he shares my husbands’ enthusiasm for UFC. This doesn’t make much sense to me, but whatever.

Anyhow, we left our husbands to their sweaty man wrestling competition and went to go see I Am Legend . (Side note: that movie was way more of a horror movie than I expected but Will Smith is hot so it was okay.)

When I came home from the movie, I went to use the bathroom. As I sat down on the toilet I noticed that the rod that holds the toilet paper was missing. I figured Isaac had something to do with that. After I was finished, I threw away the cardboard roll that was sitting empty on top of the toilet.

To my surprise, there was a whole roll of wet toilet paper in the trash can. Knowing now that my son had been up some nefarious potty activity whilst his father was busy with man wrestling, I decided I should so some follow up.

Me: Hey Kev, what did Isaac do in the bathroom and where is the toilet paper rod?

Kevin: Oh it wasn’t Isaac.

Me: Excuse me, what?

Kevin: Not sure what happened, Scott went in there and when he came out he said that he dropped the rod in the toilet.

Me: What?

Kevin: Yeah, he said he decided to flush it instead of putting his hand in the toilet because he was sure it would just “pop back up.”

Me: (laughing) Please tell me you are kidding?

Kevin: No – isn’t it so awesome that the toilet flushed the whole rod? That toilet rocks.

Me: Well it won’t be so cool when it clogs our sewer pipe.

Cut to Friday night before my birthday

After getting Orange Chicken from Panda Express (they seriously put crack in that stuff, I can’t get enough), we decide it is past time for both of our children to be in bed. However, before they can go to bed, they both need baths. Isaac protests taking a bath with Joshua and insists that he take a shower by himself. I oblige his request and get him set up in our shower while I bathe Josh in the adjoining bathtub.

I get Joshua all washed up and in his PJ’s and tell Isaac it is time to get out. He turns off the shower and gets out, running naked through the house like a wet dog.

It is at this point that Kevin notices there is a lot of water on the bathroom floor. I assume it is just remnants of Isaac’s hydro-streaking. But all of the sudden there is a lot of water. Everywhere. It is now coming up from the toilet, the shower drain, and the bathtub is filling up. The water coming up isn’t so pretty either – it has particles. I am at this point, assuming they are of the “poo” nature.

We check the other bathroom and a similar thing is occurring there. After a 15 minute argument as to the cause of the poo back-flush into all of our sinks and drains, we settle on calling Roto-Rooter. I will be honest, I called them because I remembered their jingle.

Call Roto Rooter, that’s the name and away goes troubles down the drain! Roto Rooter!

(Advertising dollars well spent Mr. Roto Rooter.)

It is now roughly 8:30 and I am on the phone with the “on call” Roto Rooter dude, his name is Tom. He says he can be at our house in 2 hours, he has two other calls before us. Oh and the overtime hour fee: $140 an hour. Normally I would say, I will see you tomorrow during regular business hours, thank you. But you see, at this point I couldn’t flush my toilet, take a shower or run my sink/washer, etc. They had me by the…toilet.

So at 10:30 at night, in the pouring rain, Tom shows up. I invite him in to look at the problem, he says it most likely is an outside issue in the main sewage pipe. (note: he also won’t shake my hand because his is covered in “particles” which is, I will soon learn, a job hazard)

So he digs around in the front yard for a while and finds the pipe opening. He brings out the industrial “snake” and sends it spinning under our grass through the main drain. A few minutes later he exclaims “Got it!”. I told him about the toilet paper rod and how I wondered if that is what clogged the pipe. He, much like my husband, was quite impressed that our toilet had such amazing flush capabilities and said that probably was what had caused the clog.

Now, Tom is an entrepreneur at heart, something we will quickly learn. When he is all finished and everything is found to be back in working order, Kevin asked him who he should make the check out to. Tom says, “well if you make it out to Roto Rooter it is $140 or you can just make it out to me for $100.”

I laugh and go inside to get him cash so that I can do my best to contribute to the black market drain snaking industry.

So, why did we have so much cash on us that night? Yeah, that would be because Kevin took cash out to buy me a massage on my birthday. Instead, Tom drove away in the tell tale white Roto Rooter van with a cool hundred in his pocket and I went to bed thinking that all I got for my birthday was my toilet.

Related posts:

1. Overheard this weekend…
2. It’s my birthday!
3. The synapses are firing away…