My husband of nearly 37 years greets me at the car door with "don't be mad at me"! What. What do you mean? What did you do? Did you break something? What's wrong?
"No, no. Didn't break anything, but I did kind of make a mess"
I'm afraid to ask, but to make the rest of this story fall in place, let me give you a little background.
We live in an older home. It has its share of issues from time to time, one of which is an old cast iron pipe that is the main drain line for the plumbing in the house. Periodically, it gets "gunky" and we have to rent the power auger, and my husband, with his achy knees and paining back, has to crawl through a window of sorts that leads into the crawl space under our house. Not a lot of fun! Every time he has to do it, he threatens that the next person that puts something down the drain other than liquid, has to make the journey into the black abyss called the "hole". So, needless to say, on Thanksgiving night, when the kitchen backed up (after multiple rounds of dishes and the turkey sliding off the cutting board), he wasn't a happy camper. He tried the obvious stuff, and I was not about to take on Walmart at 10 pm on Thanksgiving night to buy Drano, so we cleaned as much as we could and decided we would tackle it when he got home from work on Friday.
Fast forward to Friday afternoon. Ran the dishwasher. Oops, my bad. Momentary brain lapse....sink filling up quickly, me plunging frantically, son holding drain stopper on other side of sink. Phew. It goes down, slowly, but it goes down. So, do I call him and tell him? Nope. We'll just wait until he gets home.
Home Depot is a life saver. He wasn't happy to be doing the drain thing this late at night, but it had to be done, so off he went, returned with the power auger and an attitude of defiance over the whole situation.
Not gonna be a good Friday night. I had dragged all of the Christmas totes out of the storage room in the basement and overall, the den looked like it had thrown up Christmas. It was everywhere, absolutely everywhere and making your way through that colorful chaos with a 6' ladder and a 50 pound power auger wasn't exactly the easiest thing to do.
Okay, he's made it through the "window" into the "hole". Fussy, but handles the task and our son and I run trips back and forth to the garage to retrieve screw drivers, flash lights, trash bags, etc... Four hours later, the drain, for all practical purposes, seems to be running clear. One a.m., the men are in the back yard, cleaning the line on the power auger. Nasty job. Just a nasty job. Glad it wasn't me doing the cleaning. I did however, have to hold the utility light during the process, so I wasn't totally free from the task.
Good job! Sink doing great, everything else seems to be good, UNTIL......Friday.
Ran the dishwasher, twice! Washed Christmas china and glassware...uh o. The sink is half full of water, and that's just not good. Phone call, "um, honey, the sink is backing up again". "Did you spill something down the drain?" "Nope, nothing. Been very careful. But it is backing up again."
Quick run to store, Drano, down the drain, fingers crossed, better, but not perfect. At a family dinner that night, my brother-in-law suggested we try running an auger from the roof vent down. Maybe a bird's nest, maybe leaves. Who knows!
So here we are on my beautiful Saturday with sunshine, Christmas carols and beautiful sunset and here he stands at my car door asking me to not be mad. Do you see where this is going? I'm sure by now that you've got a hint about what's coming next.
I'm prepared for the worst. He walks me into the kitchen and our son is just finishing up mopping up the floor, counters, walls, stove, basically, you name it! Anything that was within 5' of my kitchen sink was fair game, including the brand new kitchen rugs that had only been put down on the floor a few days earlier. The first words out of my son's mouth were "mom, don't be mad at dad, it was an accident, and I cleaned it up...don't be mad, please don't be mad..."
Here's what happened. The Man, accompanied by auger, climbed up on the roof, and he ran that line down through the roof vent into the trap for the kitchen sink. Nothing, absolutely nothing came up, no leaves, no bird's nest, no squirrels, no pine cones...literally nothing! So, frustrated about what's next, he ponders the whole thing for awhile and decides that maybe, just maybe, he might need something with a little oomph behind it, so he drags an extension cord and the leaf blower up to the roof and positions the leaf blower over the top of the vent and let's it rip! OMG!!!!
Our son, who is quietly sitting in the living room playing a video game, shoots up out of his chair, totally freaking out over the two geysers that are shooting up out of the kitchen sink drains. Screaming, running crazy searching for towels, whatever to block the jets of water that are pretty impressive. He heads outside to find out just what is going on....and that's when my husband paled and moments later, greeted me in the driveway begging me to not be mad at him. I huffed and puffed for awhile, especially while I was stripping counters of everything, sanitizing everything in sight and steam cleaning the floor. OY! Okay, so I was mad, but when it was all over, I just sat there and laughed about it. I would have given anything to see the look on my son's face when that water shot up from the drains. And, I kind of wish I would have taken a picture of my husband while he was standing at my car door begging me to not be mad.
It just all became very funny, and yes, we are speaking! I got over my frustration quickly and quietly chuckle to myself. Besides, I can't tell you how many people were probably rolling on the floor in hysterics when I told them about "The Tale of Two Geysers" in my kitchen.
Life's little moments...that's what keeps us going. Besides which, it was just water, after all!
I'm sure that God had a good chuckle. Maybe it was a lesson for me in patience. Maybe it was a lesson for my son in diligence, or perhaps for my husband, a lesson in being persistent. Who knows, but things are cleaned up and now, well, it's just funny.
Love to all of you and God bless!
Kaye
by the way, the drain is still backed up! Any ideas?
