Monday, January 28, 2013

Clogs: Tales from the Toilet

This post has honestly nothing to do with asperger's or bipolar, but instead are some crazy stories that occurred in our home, particularly in our bathroom that I just don't believe happens to everyone.  An incident occurred early this week that reminded me of all the others misfortunes that have occurred with us and the wrath of the toilet. I apologize for going off my normal path, but since this is also therapeutic for me, I truly need a good laugh today, and the stories below make me laugh every time I think about them.

The saga begins when my then boyfriend, now husband, and I started to live together.  We lived in this really sweet, older home that was vacant for two years before we moved in.  We did a lot of cleaning and fixing and really just loved the house.  Expect for one small thing.  The bathroom.  Apparently, it is really hard on a bathroom to not be used for two years.  The old toilet paper in the pipes turns into a cement and causes a thinning of the pipes.  (You probably already see where I am going with this.)  Unfortunately for me, it always seemed that when I used the bathroom, the toilet clogged.  It happened so often that my then boyfriend gave me an official WWE nickname.  The terror of the toilet, the commode choker, the destroyer of the dumper, the porcelain punisher....Lisa  "the Clog" Horvath.  It was funny and maddening to me all at the same time as I would be plunging away trying to fix the problem.  What made the whole situation worse was that the plumbing in this house was old, and therefore, if you plunge the toilet, it would come up into the shower.  So, every time I clogged the toilet, I had to scrub the shower with bleach.  It was so bad, that we were shower shoes in our own shower.  The only thing we could do was laugh about the situation and make light about it.  My husband even came up with a little ditty about it, "Ghetto shower, there is shit on my shoes.  Ghetto shower, you give me the poop'n blues."  If you can imagine those words to good blues harmonic blues track then you can imagine my husband's daily showering jingle.  A year later, after our lease was done, we moved into our newly purchased home thinking our bathroom blues were behind us.

Oh, how naive were we!  But before I go into that I have to mention that at this time in our life, before kids, before marriage, we loved to have nice aquariums and fish.  We actually had fish that thrived and grew quite big.  We had one fish that I named Pinky, which was a African Ciclid. Pinky grew to an enormous size, which no kidding was the size of a desert plate.  At least 3-4 inches wide and 4-5 inches longs.  A huge fish to say the least.  When our fish would die, my husband would scoop them up, take them outside, and throw them out back into our 1/2 acre of woods.  But, Pinky was special.  Pinky was the meanest, baddest, craziest fish we ever had.  Pinky was my husband's favorite.  So when Pinky final could no longer be with us, my husband felt that she needed a better burial than the good ole toss.  That's right, he honored her with the royal flush.  Now, please don't judge my husband for flushing a fish the size of a 6" sub down the toilet, for he was in mourning.  When I arrived home that day, he hit me with the news.  Honey, Pinky died and I clogged the toilet.  It took me awhile before I realized that he had clogged the toilet with Pinky.  Oh, I said, did you plunge it. Yes, he said.  I couldn't get it.  Oh, so that is why the plunger is out in the yard, I said.  Smart ass, he said. 

So let me fast forward three days.  By this time, we had tried a snake, soap, plunging with a "better" plunger from Lowes, had my father-in-law come over and called my dad who was on vacation and asked him questions.  It was down to hiring a plumber, but since we just put all of our money into the house, we couldn't afford one.  So, on the fourth day, we decided to unbolt the toilet and go fishing, pun intended.  Now, I'm sorry but I have to be a tad gross for a minute, but just imagine the smell that comes from a dead fishing rotting in a toilet for over four days.  It's not pleasant, and my husband could not handle it.  Being that I worked for a veterinarian for many years, I was used to crazy smells and therefore had the task of getting Pinky out.  By this time, my husband was so furious about the incident, he took the Walmart bag that had Pinky's remain, marched down behind our house cursing with every step and threw her as far as he could into the woods.  We stopped buying fish after that.

But the doozy happened on New Year's Eve of 2009.  My aspie was still a baby and we had decided to have a quiet evening at home with just the three of us.  Because everyone was off, all of our relatives wanted us to visit in the day so that they could see the baby.  So, we decided to get ready and do our visting early and then be home for our nice celebration.  I just got my aspie into his car seat to leave for the day, when my husband had to use the bathroom.  He told me to go ahead and load up the baby and he would be right out.  Minutes later we were on our way.  We had such a nice day and got home about six hours later.  We opened the door to our home to see water wash out the door.  As my husband steps into the house, he looks over to see our living room ceiling on the floor and that our entire first level was flooded.  He could hear and see water overhead, so he ran upstairs to find the toilet overflowing continuously.  That's right, my husband, not Lisa "the clog", overflowed the toilet.  Something had happened that a pipe or gasket or something had broke due to the clog which allowed the toilet to continuously run.  I honestly, still don't know the how's or why's because as the plumber was talking I just kept thinking in my head, "Oh my gosh, my husband just took a dump on our entire house."  I just couldn't get over it.  Needless to say we packed up and went to my dad's house where we stayed until our home could be decontaminated and fixed.  We were back in the home about two days later, but the restoration was not completed for six months.  I did get a better floor out of the deal, but every time he goes to refer to me as "the clog" he stops knowing that I have one better in my back pocket. 

I honestly forgot about these incidents until the other day when my aspie comes into the bedroom where the baby and I were and said, "That's a lot a lot a lot of pee."  I knew something was up because every time my aspie pees he says the same thing.  "That's a lot of pee."  For the extra a lots I knew something had to be wrong.  Apparently, my aspie had flushed and it clogged, but not knowing what to do he just kept flushing.  It wasn't a big deal that it overflowed until my baby came running into the bathroom to see where his brother and I went.  Before I could get the yell out to stay back, he was sliding across the floor, on his back, in the overflow.  Oh yes, and here we are again.  The wrath of the toilet has struck, again!  So, two hours later, after the kids took baths, the bathroom was scrubbed and the toilet was unclogged, I sat down with my tea and had to laugh.  The "clogs" have spawned little "cloglings!"

1 comment:

Wilfred Andrews said...

Oh dear! There's nothing quite like a blocked toilet to cause chaos and disaster is there? And you've got enough on your hands as it is. I loved the tale of Pinkie the fish though- and I think I may be singing your husband's "Ghetto Shower" song all day long now, once I figure out a tune for it.