November 29, 2004

A comedy of Errors or Thanksgiving...

It all started out so nice and normal. My Aunt and Uncle came into town, and being the good niece, I offered up my place for them to stay. Well my mom offered it for me but who can argue with her? So me and my dog go to stay at friends house for a few days, because you can really only hang out with relatives for so long. So Wednesday night I get them settled and head out...

Thursday Morning. The phone rings. It's my Mom. -Have you talk to Uncle Joe? -No, does he need something? -I don't know, it was something about your sink. -OK well I'm almost to your house, we'll figure it our later.

Later - My aunt and uncle show up at my parents. Uncle Joe walks over to me. -Yeah, not really sure what's wrong with your sink. Must be the disposal, there's some water that won't drain. And with that he turns to go play with the 1-yr old nephew. I should probably note at this point that they had made a sweet potato dish for Thanksgiving. That becomes important in a few minutes...

Friday - I make it back to my place and low and behold he's right. There is still 2 day old gross water in the sink and dirty dishes everywhere. GREAT! It wasn't so much the disposal as much as it was a clogged drain pipe. Now being a pseudo engineer, I figure, really how hard can it be to get that drain thing unattached from under the sink. This after pouring 2 bottles of drain-o down the sink hoping against hope that would take care of it. It didn't. So I clean out all the crap out from under the sink so I can get in there and unscrew something. There's got to be something right? Hmmm. Well I have a 2" PVC pipe coming from the disposal making that "S" shape thing and then going into the wall. Where's the thing you need the plyers/tool thing for. Shouldn't there be something there? The ONLY thing I could see connecting the pipes was this pink resin stuff. I thought I could probably rip the whole thing out of the sink, but there was no way to get that back together AND be water tight. So what's a single girl with a crappy home owner warranty to do? I called the plumber.

In comes the plumber. So they get there and confirm that indeed my sink is stopped up. Really? He gives me the option of having the line snaked or just unclogging it. I figured the place was 15-years old and probably needed a little extra sumthin sumthin. The plumber then gets under the sink. He seems a bit confused as to how the whole system was lined out. Then he goes to his truck, gets what has got to be one of the biggest saws I have ever seen in my life and cuts the PVC pipe in 2. I can't tell you how happy I was that he had to do that. It was a small victory, but at least I didn't just miss a big, "release pipe here" switch.

Now he's just about ready to snake the line. He gets some huge machine coil thing from his truck, wheels it in and looks for a plug. It's one of those super duper fridge or dryer type plugs. Since the washing machine was the closest thing there, that's what got moved. Not the easiest thing since my dryer sits on top of it. Now is the moment of truth. Everything is plugged in, the snake is even in position and then they turn it on.

POP

I wonder what that was? The plumber was quick to say -Well that saved you some money. Won't be able to snake the line, not enough power in here. -Oh well, ok.

I am a little confused at this point. Not enough power? Well I guess the POP said it all. So they just cleaned out the P-trap which consisted of sweet potato peelings the size of my fist all scrunched together. Yep, kinda what I thought would be there... So they wrap up and I head on over to the folks. My nephew was there and I will be the favorite aunt, I needed to put in some time.

Saturday - I get up and go to the fridge to get my morning diet coke. As I open the door I think there is just something odd there. Hmmmm. Oh yes, the light should be on and it should be cold. Apparently the POP was the fuse to the fridge breaking. Heavy sigh. I'll just go watch some TV, drink some warm diet coke and think about this later.

Sunday - FINALLY. Things are getting back to normal. The relatives have all gone. The only thing I have to do is clean up a little, do some laundry and pick up a friend at the airport. About 3 hours before needing to leave for the airport I throw some clothes in the dryer, take my dog for a walk and just relax a little. When I get back from the walk I notice that it is REALLY warm and REALLY humid in my little place. As I walk closer and closer to the washer, I notice it gets hotter and steamier with every step. That would be because the vent hose had fallen off my dryer completely when they went to plug in the snake machine. It took me 2 hours to get that all taken care of. I barely made it to the airport.