Wednesday, September 2, 2009

vroom vroom, glug, glug

Of all the issues that come up on a daily basis, plumbing issues have to be the most fun. And thankfully, the six kids in my house every day insure that I will have plumbing issues from time to time. Like last week.

We had been having a hard time with the kids’ bathroom toilet not flushing. It would flush most of the time, but only parts of whatever was being flushed would go down. I’m gonna give you a minute to think about that….This particular toilet has been full of surprises since we bough the house. In fact, Bryan and I spent our third anniversary bailing water out of that bathroom after a little flood.

So last week it actually stopped flushing. When someone pushed the flusher thing (that’s a technical term) the water would try to go down and then overflow onto the floor, the rugs, your feet, anything. I was finally forced to call for help.

Bryan’s dad has some friends who have some plumbing experience. They were kind enough to come to our house and work on our toilet for an hour before deciding that this required professional help. Which made me want to throw up in my mouth because professional help means big money. Thinking about it, I realized that being a plumber would be great, even in a poor economy – because when your toilet is backing up and overflowing onto the floor, you are going to call a plumber no matter how little money is in the bank account.

The plumbers came and worked in the bathroom for about an hour. I was getting breakfast for the kids and couldn’t be too attentive to the men who were tracking muddy water (at least I hope that was mud…) through my house. They did catch my attention, however, when they carried the toilet past the living room and out onto the front lawn. That was when I started to sweat a little.

The kids and I all gathered at the front window and watched, open mouthed, as the two men played a sort of wrestling game with our toilet. One had his legs wrapped around the toilet and the other was using some auger thing to jam into the toilet and yank it back out. It was frightening. I began to wonder if it wouldn’t have been cheaper to just buy a new toilet.

About thirty minutes later, out of the toilet appeared a toy motorcycle. I was shocked. I mean, how would a toy motorcycle have gotten into the toilet? No, I wasn’t shocked. I find toys in the toilet all the time. I usually just grab them out when I see them (and wash them in bleach and quarantine my hand for awhile) but I will admit that any toy that goes past where I can see into the toilet might get away. I am not sticking my hand into the caverns of the toilet. Even I have my limits.

I know who put the motorcycle there – Wyatt. He is obsessed with all things toilet-related and I have to pull him out of the bathroom several times a day. I thought about keeping the little motorcycle and saving it until Wyatt is all grown up and buys his first home – and then putting it in his toilet just for fun. But in the end, I let the plumbers take the motorcycle.
But Wyatt better be careful. Because next time, I just might let them take the offender, too.

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