The Hits Just Keep on Coming

It seems as though, since I have now called out 2008 as the whoring bitch of a year that it is, that the year seems determined to go out with a loud fucking BANG.

We shopped carefully for Christmas this year, using very little credit to buy our Christmas gifts, relatively. Felt pretty good about Greg's company staying busy enough to keep his overtime going strong. Gas dropped like a rock, made it feasible to fill the tank again. Got 'caught up' per se, were no longer worrying quite so much about the grocery budget again, and have that general sense of being able to ....{inhale}....ahhhh....breathe easy, just a little bit.

And then it happened.

Yesterday, early evening, Jackson was in the bathroom, "cleaning" the toilet, with paper towel in hand, smearing water all over the seat. Dandy. Fine. I was on the phone at the time (part of the reason he was able to venture into the bathroom with paper towels at his leisure), so Greg took care of it.

Later last night, I started a load of laundry, after having let it get behind again (be shocked, go ahead). It was laying, in somewhat sorted piles, in the laundry room. I first hear water backing up into the floor drain. This strikes me as odd...we snaked that drain several months back and while it has not been perfect, it rarely backs up when the washer runs anymore. Clearly, today was not a good day. As I'm discussing this with myself, I hear Greta crying.

I look into the laundry room, where I see her, stranded on the other side of a not-so-mini-lake, as though she was on an island in danger of being swallowed by the sea.

Note: the dog likes to sleep in my laundry room, under my laundry table. Since she does, her dog bed is in there, she loves it, she's not banished there. Anyway.

So, I go to the other door of the laundry room, and rescue Greta. Greg hears the hoopla going on, wakes up, and comes to surmise the damage. The water is NOT going down. The drain is, clearly, NOT slow. It is clogged. C-L-O-G-G-E-D. And the lovely piles of clothes are now becoming wet, stinky islands. My throw rug is saturated half way through.

Greg turns off the water, and sighs. He reveals now that when Jackson had been in the bathroom earlier, he went to flush the toilet and it was clogged...presumably with PAPER TOWELS. So he had plunged it, and it cleared at the toilet end, and he thought little else of it. Surely if it could clear the smaller toilet drain, it would clear the larger main line, yes?

Uh, looks like a big fat NO on that one.

This began around 12:30 (I thought it was earlier until I remembered I had just emailed Deb when it happened, and that was sent around 12:30).

By 3:30 AM, we had called the city sewer department, our utility company, Greg had snaked the drain, from two spots, {intentionally} BROKEN an original piece of plumbing that was rusted/corroded shut, snaked the drain again, used the clog buster (which it turns out was not big enough for the main drain line), considered calling a plumber at 2AM (cha-CHING!), decided against calling a plumber at 2AM, shop-vac'd up all the water, 8 gallons at a time, over and over as we tried to break the clog with the hose and the clog buster (OH - and spent 20 minutes thawing the hose that we didn't empty in the fall...lesson learned there!). Finally we fell into bed between 3:30 and 4:00, having decided that Greg would go to Home Depot at 7AM to get a bigger clog buster, a better snake, and a new drain plug (to replace the broken one).

We were so exhausted we didn't even care how badly we smelled. Greg got up early, went to HD as planned, got what we needed, and after much more effort, it drained. FINALLY. It drained. Hallelu!

Greg went upstairs, took a long shower, followed by a double hot bath. The drain was fine, drying up nicely, drained fine after his bathing, and I was starting laundry.

And then it backed up again.

Greg snaked it again, and thought he felt it give, and then it drained again. And then it clogged again. And now it takes several minutes for it to drain, when it feels like it, if it drains at all.

The plumber is coming between now and 4 PM. Greg is less-than-amused at having to call a plumber, I think it violates some manhood code in his family. I'm doubtful he'll even tell his father. Poor guy. He busted his butt, got stunk up more than once, and it's still not right.

Aaaand remember all the comfort and joy about money stuff being OK now? Throw that shit out the window, because I'm almost positive this guy is going to want more money than we have in checking, so we'll be cracking open the credit card envelope. Won't that be fun? Merry Christmas, bank!

So, 2008 is proving, once again, to be a shitty, shitty, pain-bringing year. Thank god it's only 9 more days until it's over.

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UPDATE:

Plumbing is clear. $329. Got to see my drain lines on camera. Ho ho ho.