DRAIN TROUBLES

Yesterday I was cleaning up the kitchen. I was putting egg shells down the disposal when the water stopped going down and started to come back up. I immediately knew what had caused the problem, potatoes. We have had issues before when too many potato peels have been ran through the disposal. This time it was potato halves so I thought it would be fine. I guess I was wrong.

Jeremy took the p-trap off to see if they was a blockage. The pipes looked pretty clear, so he ran a plumbing snake down the pipe in the wall. He thought he felt something move. He put the drain back together and ran water to see if it was fixed. It ran great until he tried the disposal again. This process happened several times.

At one point I said " I wonder what the basement looks like?" The floor drain in the laundry room has had problems. Jeremy ran down stairs to look. It was not pretty. There wasn't a huge mess but definitely a mess. Luck for us the laundry room is cement and foot square sticky tiles. There was nasty black "stuff" in a big circle ( maybe 4.5 feet across) around the drain. Jeremy grabbed the snake and tried to get it into the drain. It wasn't working because of all the twist and turns. One time he had it in a little way and all of a sudden I see air coming up I was like "That has to be good, right?" Nope! After the air came up so did more water. After more trying with the snake I suggested just trying the plunger. Jeremy did it once and we couldn't tell if it worked or not. So he tried it again and that time it definitely worked. Yeah all the water was gone but boo all the poo was still there. Jeremy kept insisting it wasn't poo but I'm not so sure about that. Alma had an appointment with the bishop so we had to hurry and get cleaned up to go over to the church.

When we got back from the church the clean up began. We put a heater under the kitchen sink to dry it out. Then went downstairs to start on the laundry room. What sludge! It was so thick and nasty. You could see bits and pieces of egg shell and potatoes.  We ripped up some of the sticky tile, more they peeled up, because of all the nasty stuff that got under them. Jeremy moved the washer out so we could clean under it. After getting all the sludge off the floor Jeremy brought down the hose and sprayed the floor. I got out the chemicals and started to sanitize everything.

After the laundry room was done we have to put everything back under the sink. The house was finally back together and I could go take a nice long hot shower.

It was an adventure but could've been a lot worse. I have a clean laundry room, under the sink was organized and due to a gasket breaking and a trip to home depot it only cost us $1.87. Not how I wanted to spend my Sunday but o'well.

FEBRUARY SO FAR

We have had quite a busy month so far. Alma turned eight and had three parties, there was Valentines Day, and several field trips.

Alma's birthday was on a Wednesday. Jeremy took half a day off to surprise Alma. We went out to lunch and then to Toys-R-Us. That night was his first official night of scouts. The next party was on Saturday with his friends. He had six friends come. The theme of the party was tricks/pranks. The last party was on Sunday with the family coming over for cake.

Valentines Day or should I say night was a blast. Jeremy and I actually had money to buy each other presents and to go out. I bought Jere some cologne from Victoria secret and fixed his watch, AGAIN. He got me two necklaces from Kay. One is from the open heart collection, I love that one. For our date we went to Ruby River and had some GREAT steak and to see The Vow.  Jeremy also bought a box of treats from Cakewalk for Alma and I to share.

We have had a lot of field trips this month so far. We had two Valentines exchanges, a couple of performances at The Capital Theater, and an art and poetry festival with Washington Online.

The second half of the month looks just as busy as the first half. Alma has the remainder of his swim lessons, we joined a co-op, and the Safe Kids Fair is coming up.