One week ago, when I turned off the water after my morning shower, there was a loud “thunk” I could hear through the pipes, and then I heard the sound of water gushing. It seems the joining where the old OLD cast iron pipes coming up from the ground meet the slightly less old copper pipes of this house…well, failed in a sudden and spectacular manner. Call to plumber, put in. FaerieBeth goes to work late, but clean. Stonebow goes to work (and then on to a final that night) grungy. We arrive home that evening to no water, so Son #3 and I drive over to my parents’ house and bathe. Stonebow come home from his final, growls a little, and just gives up and goes to bed. Still with no shower. The next morning, he trudges to the street and turns on the water long enough to shower, and didn’t give a tinker’s damn that while he did, gallons of precious water gushed out of the pipes under the house. Frankly, by then I didn’t care, either.
That was Wednesday. Thursday, no plumber showed up. Call was returned with, “Oh? Oh, yeah…we’ll be out tomorrow” Friday, plumber shows up and fixes the leak. Yay! Basic Hygiene is restored just in time for my period.
Saturday, Son#3 frolics in a bubble bath with a myriad of plastic jurrasic creatures. Bathtub drains…s.l…o…w…l…y. Toilet than won’t flush.
Christ.
Stonebow arrives home from yet another final. I explain the toilet problem, and demonstrate the lack of drainage. Tempers flare. We argue about tampons and the Instead cup. Try drain cleaner? Okay…no improvement. ARGH. Suffering occurs throughout Saturday and Sunday. We highly suspect a apatosaurus is at fault.
Monday- call to plumber. No.Body.Shows.Up.
Tuesday- call to plumber. Arriving home I can see evidence that the problem has been addressed because my bathroom is covered with…FILTH. Toilet still does not flush properly, bathtub drains slowly, now with bubbles coming from the joints in a nearby pipe. :mad: Call to plumber. “Oh, yeah. The roto guy couldn’t find anything in the pipes. We’ll be back tomorrow.” I’m still on my period. Now the top of the hot water heater is leaking from both the incoming cold and the outgoing hot because of all the pressure confusion the system has dealt with. (Sadly there is no smiley for OMFuckingGawdI’m going to KillSomeone)
Wednesday (Today)- Arrive home. Toilets work. Water heater is not leaking. Bathtub works. The cause of it? A tree root invaded some of the old clay drain pipes under the house and caused them to collapse. It’s only patched now, and they’ll be back tomorrow to finish the job. There’s a large muddy, noisome hole dug near the south side of the house. It would be suitable for a grave. I have working toilets, though, so that’s all I care about. My period, though, has decided to be over. Stonebow has headed off to another final, the last one. I’m going to cry, wash down my bathroom with bleach water, drink some egg nog laced with rum, take a hot bath, and shave my legs.
I managed not to kill anybody this week.
Please, shave your legs BEFORE you have the eggnog laced with rum. Otherwise, you’ll have to scrub the bathroom down with bleach again.
Srsly, FaerieBeth, what a suckative week! I think you have every right to be proud that you didn’t kill someone. (And what’s up with plumbers not cleaning up after themselves? Do they just figure they are in the power position and can do whatever they damned well please? The last ones who did that to me were scratched off my list and bad-mouthed to anyone who asked for plumber recommendations.)
Seconding shaving first, and rum laced egg nog second! I’m sorry your week was so sucky. With luck, Stonebow will bring home tasty food or pamper the both of you in some way to try to make up for it.
May I suggest the rum while IN the tub?
And you need a killing contract out on those plumbers. That is terrible!
We also have the tree root/old clay pipe issue upon occasion–no tampons are allowed in our plumbing and no high end, quality, lotioned toilet paper either.
At least you didn’t kill anyone. I’m betting a parasarolophus (spellling? It’s been awhile)–those duckbills and that horn thing–they would clog anything!
I think that sounds like an excellent idea. I’ll try to go easy on it until I’m done wielding the razor blades.
I’m exploring the possibilities. After all, I do have that large, muddy hole in the yard.
My husband says they probably just didn’t clean up because they knew they’d be back the next day. He didn’t have to wrench my beach towels out of the drains, though. I should have worn rubber gloves, too. Yuk.
I have been using the Instead Cup for sveral months, but was tired and groggy when I got home from work on Friday afternoon, so I grabbed the first thing I came to. I’m just glad the plumber didn’t pull any tampons out of the pipes, or I never would have heard the end of it. I was banking on using my child as a scapegoat, but they didn’t extract any dinosaurs, either.
You are a strong, amazing woman. And I love **freckafree’s ** word “suckative”.
I added it to my spell check dictionary. 
I have successfully bleached every surface in the bathroom. I have washed every towel, bath mat and shower curtain I own. I think I’ll skip the egg nog and just stick with the rum. And coke, maybe.
As a fellow home owner who has given all her money to plumbers this year and spent more time than she would like with bleach, I firmly approve of your plan to drown your sorrows in egg nog. Rum with a little egg nog flavoring is a tried and true method of dealing with life’s little annoyances. And sewage. There is a reason it’s such a popular holiday drink (exorbitant calories notwithstanding).
I love this word, and would like to point out that this is only the second time I have ever seen it used in my life.
Thank you. Carry on…
Damn, have you figured out just what you did to piss off the plumbing gods?
Go with the glass of rum + 1 jigger egg nog.
Wow, that just stinks. (No pun intended, well, maybe a little one.) We’ve had our share of plumbing troubles, including the time I spent the day sitting by the utility room drain with a ladle, scooping up nasty water to keep it from overflowing. I think I should have thought of rum after that. I’ll keep it in mind for next time.
Been there, done that, paid $4000 for the pleasure of having a company dig up a 10’ section of pipe (under road & sidewalk) to replace it…
IF you are on a sewer system, a tablespoon of copper sulphate down the drain once a month will keep the trees from reinvading your waste line. Trees aren’t very smart, but once they find a source of plentiful poopwater, they won’t politely leave it alone.
My sympathies.
We had the misfortune to discover tree roots had invaded our clay drainpipe just a month or so after moving into our house last summer. Nothing says welcome home like 2" of raw sewage in the laundry room, no?
Don’t know if it’s offered in your area, but once the roots were extracted, we opted to have the remaining sections of clay pipe lined with an epoxy liner - we have a 100+ yr old maple out front, so odds were pretty good that it would re-offend on a regular basis. It was pretty painless, actually… for two days, our chunk of our lawn was temporarily replaced by a 10 ft deep hole dug out by some very industrious (and shirtless and muscular and ummm… I digress) plumbers and cost substantially less than it would to replace the whole stretch with newer PVC.
At the very least, it’ll mean you won’t have to chase down the plumber again in a year or two when more roots get into the pipe.
Mahna Mahna, I love your username.