Monday, February 19, 2007

Spring has sprung...in the bathroom.

Mike was sick on Valentine's Day so we decided to put off our celebration until this weekend. He wanted to take me to see Ghost Rider; I was voting for Breach. Either way, we were both excited to go *out* on a real date...something we haven't done since my birthday. (Although our 10th anniversary on Christmas Eve was romantic and wonderful, we stayed *in* and watched It's a Wonderful Life.) The plan was to save money by going to the Saturday matinee so we could spring for popcorn.

So how'd that go?

Not too good.


Instead, we pulled weeds IN THE BATHROOM! A load of laundry somehow made the guest bathroom explode unspeakably disgusting stuff all over the bathroom floor and in the tub and in the potty bowl. Senor Grouchy had taken Misha to the store for milk (of course!) so I cleaned things up as best as I could while GAGGING.



How did black stuff get two and a half feet up the wall? Did the potty projectile vomit? The little gas heater between the toilet & tub had black "dirt" in all of the little vents! Oh, and the tub...shudder.



Later, Mike went to the rental place and rented a snake thing; lucky I'd just been to a BodyPump class--that machine was HEAVY! He moved the potty into the kitchen onto a tarp (the dogs were amazed...and so was I!) and snaked that thing for all it was worth. Imagine our surprise when he cleaned ROOTS out of the pipes! He ended up with handfuls of roots on the bathroom floor.

Somewhere, one of our pipes has broken and is allowing roots to clog the system. We clearly have an expensive plumbing bill ahead of us (probably to be expected in a house that once served as Camp Barkeley barracks).

OTOH, at least our house smells great. It smells like we've been gardening in the bathroom! Seriously. It SMELLS LIKE SPRINGTIME in there...which is a whole lot better than how it smelled about 24 hours ago. :-)

4 comments:

Kirsten said...

Could you imagine coming home from the movies to find all this? Romantic mood all gone (would you even have one after watching "Ghost Rider"?)!
Nothing grows above ground in Texas, but don't ask about 'below'! I'm glad it smells like Spring to you, how many candles are you burning? :-) Good luck with the big job coming up (Spring Break)!

mad4books said...

HA! You said "big job."

:-)

Karen said...

Oh NO! That's not good. I'm sorry you're going to have to deal with that. I guess the money we save in AC bills because of our shade trees gets spent in plumbing bills.

Let's look at the bright side:

I just read yesterday that shade trees can save us up to 30% on our AC bills. How many years did it take for those roots to get to the pipes and cause a problem? I'd rather keep the shaded house & yard and deal with roots than have no trees and deal with the AC bills and UV rays. Cancer's expensive, too!

Melanie said...

OH NO!!! I just read your blog to Pete... he said that IS NOT GOOD and he wonders if you have cast iron pipes ... either that or ceramic. (He said if they are cast iron then probably you have rotted spots in the piping and the roots have wormed their way in.) :( OH WOW.... I'M SORRY! Is there a plummer in the house?? (or in the family?) What does Mike do for work? (Please say he is a part time plummer!) I'm thinking... a nice vanilla candle would help to cover the 'aroma'!! Spring time... naaaaa.... that is still at least 6 weeks away!! Keep us posted!
Love Ya, Mel.