My Jacked Up Life

I know that sounds dirty, but unfortunately, it’s not.

Most of the time, I love owning my own home. I can do whatever I want to it and no one can say a damn thing about it. I have a bathroom that’s a tribute to Elvis’ classic 1961 movie ‘Blue Hawaii’. AC’s bed room has a 6 foot long Hot Wheels flame airbrushed on one wall and his toy room, I painted ‘Licorice Red’ with a monster truck border. See…whatever I want.

Did you notice that I started that paragraph with the word ‘most’? Because that’s important. Right now, I’m not liking it too much.

Here’s a little ground work. My husband Richard and I bought this house when we got married fourteen years ago. It’s a cute gingerbread style house that’s located in a good neighborhood and I like most of my neighbor’s. (There’s that word again) Luckily, over the last fourteen years I haven’t had one problem with the sewer backing up into my finished  basement. That is until Monday morning.

The following is an account of my last three day’s.

Monday Morning: Gene has left to take BL and SP to school and then he’s off to work. I just dropped off AC off at his school and as is my habit, I head down to the basement bathroom to get ready for work. When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I noticed a bad smell. Kind of like a shitty toilet kind of smell. No…..wait…..it smells exactly like a shitty toilet. I figured that one of the boy’s forgot to flush the toilet after their morning crap. ( I swear, one of these day’s I am going to banish all four of them to shitting in a bucket in the garage.)

When I get to the bathroom, there’s nothing in the toilet. Hmmmmm….that’s odd. Where’s that smell coming from? Oh well, maybe one of them dropped a load that lingered a bit longer than it should have. Is this what my life has come too? Wondering about craps that other people have taken? Great.

I proceed to the laundry room to iron my clothes and guess what. I find the source of the smell. The sewer has backed up and there’s some sludge on the floor. I call Gene and tell him that we need to call someone to snake out the sewer. I hate dealing with stuff like this so Gene makes the arrangements.

 Monday Afternoon: The plumber get’s there and begins his work. He tells us that something is blocking the line, it might be a rootball. He flushes out the line as best as he can but there’s a lot of sludge built up in there. He recommends that we have the line air jetted out. We said we would think about it.

Tuesday Morning 2:00 am: A huge rain storm hits St. Louis. I wake up to hear Gene in the basement moving furniture around. This can’t be good. I go downstairs to see what’s going on and I find an inch and a half of water covering about two-thirds of the floor. (Did I mention that this is a fully finished basement?) Now, normally, this would send me into a panic but I got one look at Gene and busted out laughing. He was down there in a t-shirt, his underwear and a pair of hunting boots. I didn’t think to grab the camera. Gene says there’s nothing for me to do, so I might as well go back to bed. He dosen’t have to tell me twice. I left his goofy looking ass standing in the 1 1/2 inches of water.

Tuesday Morning 8:00 am:  Gene and I decide that maybe we should air-jet the line. I call Roto Rooter and make the arrangements. A Plumber will be at the house between 9 and 9:30 am. This means that I have to call into work because someone has to be at the house. (Darn!)

Tuesday Morning 9:15 am:  Roto Rooter arrives. Carl sets up in the backyard and begins his work. When he’s finished he begins to collect his tools. He tries to pull the hose out of the line and it won’t move. It’s stuck. Carl spends close to two hours yanking on this damn thing and it doesn’t budge. AT ALL!

Eventually, Carl tells me that they’re going to have to a camera come out tomorrow morning to see what the problem is. (WTF?!)

Wednesday Morning 8:30 am:  Roto Rooter calls to tell me that they will be arriving in about an hour. (Hooray!!!! Throw a fucking parade!!)

9:30 am:  Bill arrives. After spending an hour in the kitchen window watching Bill root around in the sewer, I decide to take the trash out. He’s got to know something by now, right?

He does. It’s good news and bad news.

Good news: The line hasn’t collapsed like we thought it might have. They actually look pretty good.

Bad news: The hose still isn’t budging. Apparently, the pipes shifted where they join together and this caused a gap in the line. The force of the jet-air pushed the hose through the gap and buried 8-10 feet of the hose straight into the dirt along side of the pipe. (How in the hell does this happen and why does it always happen to me?) 

My kitchen 12:00 pm:  Bill comes in to let me know how thing’s should proceed from this point. It looks like they are going to have to break up the concrete at the bottom of my outside basement stairs to get their damn hose out. While they’re there they will straighten out the pipes so that there is no gap. It should only cost us about $900-1000.

EXCUSE ME?!!!

If Bill wants his hose back, it ain’t gonna cost me shit!!!!!

So, I ask Bill, ‘Do you want your hose back?’ He ignores me. Bill then proceeds to tell me that I should call my insurance company to see if this will be covered on my home owner’s. (BULLSHIT!!!!)  I tell Bill he better call his liability insurance to see if he’s covered.

Bill then begins to explain to me that although it’s their hose and they got it stuck they’ll probably split the cost with us because it was my pipe that shifted. ($900-1000 is after we split the cost)

Again, I ask Bill, ‘Do you want your hose back?’ Once again, he ignores me.

He starts talking again but at this point I’ve stopped listening to him. I explain to Bill that if the force of the air was strong enough to bury ten feet of hose in the dirt, then it may have been strong enough to create the gap to begin with. Which makes it SO not my houses fault. He starts talking again.

So, I say to him, ‘Dude….I’m going to ask your for the last time, Do you want your fucking hose back? Because if you do then you better go get it and fix whatever you break.’

His supervisor will be calling me tomorrow.

The funniest part of this whole thing is the narrated DVD Bill made of my sewer. It’s getting late so I’ll plan on loading that tomorrow.