Heathenly’s recent post reminded me of a plumbing disaster, so thanks for the post idea!
Scene: Christmas Eve, my house, a lifetime ago. My in-laws are on their way to spend the holdiay. I will have a house full of 15 people in a short while. It’s about 5:30 pm. I have been cooking tamales from scratch for several hours. I finish and begin to wash a sink full of dishes.
Problem 1: Oops! The kitchen sink is not draining. The water is coming up, up, up, and is about to overflow. The husband (now ex) is gone, doing work at the office so his schedule will be clear when his family is visiting. I try to unclog the drain with no luck. I try to find a plumber but none will come at this hour. I finally find one that informs me that the charge will be triple the hourly fee because of the day and time. I have no choice. I tell him to come on over.
Problem 2: The plumber arrives and says it is the garbage disposer that is out. He has one in the truck but it’s the wrong size. The supply stores are closed. So he calls a friend who comes over with some extra pipes that they somehow make work so that the disposer will fit. The job takes over two hours but it’s done. I now have no space under the sink because of the extra pipes down there that they used to modify the wrong-sized-disposer. I really don’t care because the in-laws just called and they are a half hour away. I write out a check (cough cough, for a huge amount cough cough) for the plumbers and go about cleaning the mess.
The mess: Not only are the dirty dishes from the tamales in there but it is also full of seeds and skin from the chile pods and those little beard-like hairs from the corn husks! There’s even small bits of dough. Yuck! I quickly clean it up and realize that I also have to wash the floor in the kitchen and back entry from the two plumbers comings and goings. Not five minutes after I finish all the clean up, my in-laws drive up. I’m a mess. I haven’t dressed for them yet and I have no makeup on.
Finally: I tell them all what happened and they kindly say they would never have known it! We proceed to eat fresh, still steaming tamales!
That’s why I hate plumbing problems. They make life a living nightmare. They make us thankful that we survived them. Then again, if we didn’t survive, we wouldn’t have to deal with their exorbitant fees!
See, the plumbing DOES know!
Once my toilet broke the day before Thanksgiving. The PORCELAIN broke. Conveniently, my mom and her husband were visiting. They got to see me flip out on the landlord’s husband, who handed me an outrageous bill after replacing the toilet.
Ah, plumbing memories!
I’m sure you helped pay for many presents for the plumber’s kids…
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Jackie, I probably put one of his kids through college on what I paid him!
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Ugh, I hate plumbing issues!
We are fighting with (well, ignoring, actually) the shower in the master bedroom at our new house. When you run the water in it, it pours through the floor into the downstairs bathroom! Not good. We had a plumber come look at it but he couldn’t figure out what to do about it, so we just don’t ever use that shower.
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No fewer than three of my clients have had their water heaters die on Christmas Eve. I don’t know whether I’m cursing them, or what.
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