And the homeownership mishaps continue

ATTENTION:  Do not read further if you are squeamish in regards to potty talk.

Last night after rushing to and sitting through an important impromptu meeting, I returned home with a caramel frappe to sit and chew the fat with my girl, Kelly, who had spent the evening with Darcy.  We enjoyed some laughs and our frappes and Kelly went home for the night.  I hit the showers.  At the very end of my shower I felt water around my ankles, nothing new in that shower, and so I figured I would be getting out the Liquid Plummer.  But as I hurriedly rinsed off my toilet began gurgling.  My first thought, "That can't be good."

The master-bath toilet has been gurgling every once in awhile when the toilet is flushed in the other bathroom, which butts up against my bathroom.  In fact the toilets are butt up against each other (no pun intended..hee hee).  I had mentioned this occurrence to the husband, but as I've stated numerous times, my husband hears the ocean 95% of the time I speak to him.  He claims he never heard me talk about gurgling toilets.  Uh huh.

I got out of the shower, dried off, and dressed.  I peered into the toilet.  It looked normal so I used it.  I flushed and was washing my hands at the sink when the toilet began to overflow.  I didn't panic as toilet issues too are a common occurrence in our house that was built in the 60's.  I tiptoed through the water and turned it off at the toilet.  I got rags and went to work cleaning.  I got out the plunger.  It was seeing its last days as a plunger, but I lowered into the bowels of the toilet and began plunging.  As I plunged a gurgling noise began sounding in my shower.  My second thought, "How odd.  That can't be good."

I stopped plunging when the plunger broke.  I muttered some choice words, sopped up the floor, and then pulled back the shower curtain to make sure all was well.  What greeted me behind the curtain was not a new car.  Instead I got oozing black sewage creeping up the shower drain to mix with the standing water.  It reminded me of the Lost smoke that terrified the inhabitants of the island.  I wandered out to alert the husband.

He entered the bathroom muttering under his breath.  By the time he was up to his elbow with the broken plunger pumping away in the toilet bowl, the muttering was full scale yelling.  As I watched him, eyes mad, mouth opening and closing, toilet water running down his face, I heard from the other bathroom a flushing sound and then some screaming.  It was midnight and my eldest had gotten up to potty.

I ran into the room to find the same scenario:  toilet overflowing, sewage back up in the tub.  My husband tried plunging both toilets, but it was a no go.  He shut off the water to both toilets, washed his hands and face, and announced before going to bed, "Well the plumbing is shot so if you have to go to the bathroom you will need to go outside in the yard like the dog.  Nothing I can do."  Within ten minutes he was snoring, and I was sure my bladder was full. 

I cleaned up what I could on the floor and threw everything into the washing machine to be cleaned when the situation was fixed.  I left the black sewage alone.  Since the water was turned off it had stopped creeping up from the drain and was slowly disappearing back down again.  I went to bed and told myself I did not need to potty.  It was 1:00 in the morning.

At 3:00 AM I jumped out of bed afraid I was about to pee the bed.  My bladder was completely full and screaming.  I awake at least once a night to use the toilet and this was it.  I paced in my bedroom reviewing my options.

• Go out back and pee in the side yard using the hose as we do when swimming.  (Yes, judge me, but you wouldn't want wet kids with no regard for your clean floors to be dripping through four rooms of your house on the way to the toilet either)
• Use one of the three sinks like your mother taught you when in Europe and sleeping in a hotel next to a whore house which shared a bathroom that was located down the hall from your hotel room.

I chose option number two.  I used the kitchen sink where paper towels and comet were readily available.  I went back to bed.  In the morning I awoke the girls and told them to hurry and dress.  My bladder was full again and I knew their bladders were going to be as well.  We loaded into the van and went to McDonald's to ready ourselves for the day.

There were two toilets in McDonald's.  I went into the handicap stall and Darcy took the other one.  I did my business and flushed.  I washed my hands and happened to look back at the toilet.  It needed a double flush.  I flushed again and exited the stall to stand with Darcy at the hand dryer.  We began talking and we dried our hands while Madison did her business in the stall that Darcy had vacated.  As we talked loudly over the noise of the dryer, I realized that we were still having to talk loudly after the dryer shut off.  Something else was making noise.  I stopped and listened and then crept back into the handicap stall.  The toilet would not stop flushing.  I jiggled the handle and Darcy and I rattled the lid some in hopes it would stop flushing...loudly.  My third thought was, "This is definitely not good."

We ran.  But we bought food just as a thank you for the use of the facilities.  When I returned home the plumber called.  I made arrangements for them to come out to the house, went north and took my mother to the foot doctor, drove back home and met the plumbers.  They entered the bathrooms and surveyed the scene.  I gave them the story, minus the one about me peeing in the kitchen sink.  We talked some football and then they headed outside and on to the roof to fix my problem.  Here were some of the problems:

• We have no clean out in the yard.  The only clean out is on the roof.  One plumber began inching the router, or the snake as I like to refer to it, down through the roof clean out.  The other plumber stayed in my master-bath watching to see if the water in my toilet went down.  It didn't.
• As the snake was inching down through the sewage pipes buried in our yard, water began bubbling up in my side yard under the master bathroom window.  It stunk to high heavens which indicated to the plumbers, "This is not good."  
• The plumbers switched positions, with the one on the ground now digging a hole where the water was bubbling.  He eventually hit pipe about ten feet down.  The pipe was covered in cement which he claimed was a good thing.
• The plumber on the roof went in with the snake 90 feet into the pipes.  I was in the bathroom when the toilet water disappeared.  I leaned out the window and informed the digging plumber.  I then joined him outside where the roof plumber then pulled out a handful of roots from the clean out.
• The plumbers got my toilets working again, but suggested that I call the county and have them come out to make sure it wasn't a problem on their end.  I have a large oak tree in the yard that was obviously the culprit.  From the tree down to the street is the county's problem.  From the tree up to my house is my problem.  The plumbers would go back and work up an estimate to redo our sewer pipes as their fix was only going to be temporary.

They left about 5:30 PM.  I put on latex gloves and set about cleaning the bathroom from top to bottom with bleach.  I threw out shower curtains and washed all towels and rugs.  I scrubbed the tub, shower, toilets and floors with bleach.  I cleaned the sinks and mirrors.  I even cleaned the fake greenery in the kids' bathroom.  I worked until 9:15 PM.  Thank god for Kelly who purchased me new shower curtains and more bleach on her way home from work so that I wouldn't have to stop and run errands too.  We went to bed that night confident there would be no more late night peeing in the kitchen sink.

The next morning the county arrived in a huge industrial truck.  One man.  He and I wandered around the house.  He remembered being at my house a few years back when we had another clogged problem, this one in the kitchen.  He was annoyed that he hadn't ordered a clean out at that time.  He told me that it could end up being our responsibility if the the problem turned out to be from the tree to our house or the county's responsibility if the problem was from the tree down to the street.  I offered him up some water and lemonade and told him that I would appreciate it if he found in favor of the latter.  He laughed and said he would be here awhile.

Three hours later he called me outside.  He had good news and bad news.  He had a camera down the pipes, and I got to take a peek down the sewer pipes.  Water was flowing quite freely until it reached a bright light at the end of the tunnel.  That light, he explained to me, was my tree roots blocking the pipe...on the county's side.  I patted his shoulders and told him he had done a good job.  Unfortunately, the problem didn't end there.  From where the plumber had dug down to the tree our pipes were slowly crumbling.  The problem was both of ours, with the majority of the problem on the county's side all the way into the middle of our street.  It would be a huge job.

He sent a root cutter down the pipes in hopes of buying us more time.  He was later joined by two more workers and two more trucks.  They worked another hour marking spots in my yard and in our street with green spray paint.  Then they left.  The next day it rained and they didn't show.  The plumber, however, did.  He came with our estimate, which he slowly folded when he heard the county's news.  He wandered around the house and stared at the green painted markings.  He seemed disappointed that the job wouldn't be bigger on our side.  We decided to wait until the county completed their job before beginning work on our end.

In the meantime I use the toilet very cautiously and take quick showers.  I have put the neighbors on alert that I may need to come a running.  I'm hoping the county doesn't leave us hanging because with all of our fecal issues in this house we need our toilets!