Who Broke the Interwebz?

So, basically, what happened was it snowed. Apparently, it snowed a LOT, in a LOT of places, only the only place I'm sure about is my particular driveway (and my laundry room) because I can't find Ninja Truck and because I don't watch the news. And I don't really care if that didn't make sense, because IT SNOWED, PEOPLE is my point.

It snowed and the snow broke the Interwebz.

Suddenly, everyone on Facebook is all OMG, SNOW, and all the blogs (including mine own) are all OMG MY SNOW! And we all seemed to forget that it's winter and sometimes snow is something that occurs in the winter and it's just fluffy and white and cold, and as long as we all listen to the news (oops), we won't DIIIIE.

It does seem that the water fairies don't like the snow, so they all flew south for the winter. But the good thing about this is that, if you get some snow in a bucket, and set it by your fireplace for three hours, it will turn into something you can pour into your toilet to make it flush.

Also, if you thaw your pipes, but they are broken, and it's still -1123 degrees, you make a skating rink. Nevermind if it's in your wellhouse or under your floor...fun is fun, right?

And nevermind that I'm an Official Unofficial Plumber now, I am not hogging all that fun to myself, so my besties the plumbers are coming over for skating and pipe repair tomorrow, and to do a snow dance to entice the water fairies back to my house.

I hope the water fairies and the plumbers aren't hungry, because Ninja Truck is either stolen or under that giant drift of snow, and I'm not even going looking for him until at least Friday, which means I am rationing the groceries and can't really share with fairies, which may be why they took off in the first place. Next time, I'm making chili even if my kids don't eat it, because I gosta have those water fairies (do you think they like chili) because seven people in one house means I need some coffee or someone's gonna get hurt. It also means that taking three hours to flush the toilet is asking a little too much of my patience.

I am hoping that the EPIC SNOW OF 2011 or whatever they're calling will go away by the weekend, that the fairies will return, and Ninja Truck will still be running after I flushed the radiator (oh yeah, I FLUSHED THE RADIATOR!!!! Or I watched my brothers do it, or something...but I know my hands were all greasy afterward, so I'm pretty sure I did something with the radiator), and Interwebz will start functioning correctly again. This is my hope for the world, or wherever it is that the SNOW is happening, aside from my laundry room.

More Epic Plumbing

I was too sick this morning to take the kids to the free working potty school, so we all stayed in and I woke up late to … well, to the potty still broken.

So I made another snake out of another hanger and made up my mind that I was not calling a plumber no matter what happened. And it worked! I fixed it all by myself with the hanger-snake, and I was so proud of myself that, after I got done with a busy morning of doing nothing but Having the Flu, I decided to tackle the washing machine.

The problem was that the water was just trickling into the washer so slowly that it took about three hours to run a load. My landlord informed me that we have hard water, and sometimes it clogs the screens. He said he just takes his out, so I may want to try that. After that, and after I asked a few intelligent questions, he also informed me that "screens" are something located in the hose that brings the water to the washer, which blew my mind because I thought the water was already in the washer and it just dispensed as needed. Either that or maybe the water fairies that live in that tank on top of the toilet. So guess what, y'all, the water fairies are only for toilets, apparently, and the washer is an entirely different process.

So I unhooked the hose, and I found the screen. There are actually two of them, on in the hose, and one in the washer. Neither of them was clogged at all. I took out both of them and made sure, and then I put the one back into the hose because it had rubber all around it, and when it comes to plumbing, you don't mess with the rubber stuff, because that's usually what's keeping the water where it belongs. I left the other one out in case of the hard water issue later. Then I put the hose back and turned the water.

Here is a picture of what I was dealing with and what the end result should be:

The water should flow into the washer just like the arrows show. But instead:

I texted Tracy, but I think I said something like "When you hook up a washer, do you have to out some goo in the hose to recent leaking or do you just screw it on right and it's supposed to work?" And she asked me to say it in English, but by the time I told her to change "out" to "put", and "recent" to "prevent", I was calling my mom to see if she knew the answer. Notice that not any time in this situation did I call someone who would actually know the answer. I need therapy.

My dad told my mom something about the rubber thing, but I was good on that, because I put that back on because you don't mess with the rubber stuff. Only then I remembered that I put it on backwards, so I took it all apart again, and just so you're keeping this in context, it's about three hours later and I still haven't even discovered the original problem the washer was having. I put it back the right way, put the hose back on, and it still leaked. I noticed it was on crooked, so I put it on very straight. Only every time I got it about halfway on, it would go crooked again.

Finally, I decided to just keep tightening it until the water stopped spraying everywhere. It worked. It's still crooked and a tad precarious and frankly, I left the washer about five feet from the wall where it blocks the dryer door because I was afraid of hose-movage if I put it back.

Then it was time to find out what was really wrong with the washer, so I turned it on to see exactly where the water fairies hoses brought the water. And it worked fantastically. I don't know what I did to fix it, but I'm good, yo.

Then I smelled something burning, only it wasn't the washer, it was the dinner. And that's why I don't believe in divorce, because one person should be breaking the washer while the other one burns dinner so they can be mad at each other instead of me just saying to myself "Why did you break the washer?" "I don't know, why did you burn dinner?" "You should have called the guy" "Well at least I can make Tuna Helper without burning it." "Shut up!" "You shut up." "Your mom." "Your face."

After it was all over, I told Emma, "I fixed the washer, I fixed the toilet, I faxed the papers, I got a job, I Had the Flu, I fed the kids, I cleaned the kitchen…" And Emma said "…but you still have to get me jammies." And so went the rest of the day.

Our Weekly Date with the Plumber

I live in an old house, and apparently, plumbing didn't come standard back in the '50's. It took one cold snap to put us without water for a couple days.

My washer hasn't worked ever since (which is killer in with so many kiddos in the house), and I'm pretty sure there is a missing or cracked pipe involved.

Today was another cold day. We were stuck in the house because of icy roads.

So the toilet quit working.

Why would the toilet work when four out of seven of us have the flu, and we can't leave the house?

I plunged it lots of times and every time I thought I had it working...well, I was wrong.

I am quite the handyman sometimes, but since I used to be married - only I was the woman in the relationship (sort of), I didn't get to keep the tools in the divorce. I only got to keep my drill, but he lost the battery when I was moving out. Long story short, sometimes we make our own tools around this house.

So I made a snake out of wire hangers. Don't tell anyone this, because I'm sure there is something fundamentally wrong with sticking wire hangers in the toilet, but what was I to do?

The problem with hangers is that they're a little too bendy. They just fold up as soon as they hit a bend in the pipes. And then, when you try to get them out, they get stuck. So you either have a toilet with a seriously long metal wire poking out of it, or you pull as hard as you can and land on your bootay with toilet water splashing everywhere when it finally comes out.

This may have happened once, or possibly three times. However many times it was, it worked for five minutes, so I put all the kids in diapers and told them to try to hold it until school tomorrow. This is why I am ok with public schools...free plumbing.

Ice Skating at My Place!

I live in an old house.

Today, I came home to my kitchen flooded because there was a small leak under the sink that had started while we were gone. I fixed it. Yeah, I'm the man. I totes fixed the sink, yo.

Except there was hardly any water pressure from the hot water side, which is also the side I fixed. Hmmm...

So I checked the hot water everywhere else. There was no hot water in the bathroom. But there was water somewhere, because I could hear it. Then I realized it was just the waterfall. Only we're not supposed to have a waterfall.

It was the line between the water heater and the bathroom, making a pool under the house, clearly not something that is supposed to happen.

Lucky me, my landlords live next door. Unlucky landlord's son, he got to swim under the house in twenty degree weather.

A few hours later, when it was very dark and very cold outside, he had it all fixed up. I was messing with the wood stove (making fire, yo!) and I heard the water come back on. Except I shouldn't have heard it, because nothing was running. So I went to see what was going on, and my kitchen was flooded again. The little leak I had fixed had turned into a giant, spewing, hot water geyser. Awesome.

I yelled out the door to tell him to turn the water back off, but he was already gone. I handed the phone to Huston and told him to call them back over, grabbed a towel and tried to stop the leak. It didn't stop, but I did get it to quit spraying all over the kitchen and just run downward like a normal leak.

Huston came in and said they weren't answering, and asked if I needed help. I was laughing because I couldn't let go and my clothes and hair and face were soaked, and I just didn't know what to do. Warrick decided to walk next door and find someone to turn off the water (there is no shut-off under the sink, by the way...I'm not that bad at plumbing.)

Just then, the water turned back off and I heard a knock at the door. I sloshed my way over to answer it, and there stood the landlord's son. He said "If you ever hear your name from under the house, and maybe a little banging on the floor, please come get me because it means I'm stuck under the house. I thought I was going to die." (He said it very nicely for someone who was stuck in one foot of crawlspace with probably six inches of standing water.)

OMG. I almost killed him, and I didn't hear him because I was too busy holding a towel around a pipe trying to save my kitchen floor from becoming a giant Slip 'n Slide for the kids! Can a renter get any more sucky than that?

So he got a wrench and did something with my repair job, turned the water back on and proved that he is a better plumber than I. And we made a deal that the kids and I would sit quietly and listen for distress signals next time he was under the house.

Chats with Shucks

Me:  (freaked out) What's wrong, Shucks?  Is there a bad guy outside?

Shucks:  No, it's this scary white thing in the bathroom...it's...well, I've never seen anything like it.

Me:  Dude, it's a toilet.  It's like, the whole point of the bathroom.

Shucks:  No, I mean it, I think it's a murderous shape-shifter or something.  It's totally gonna' eat us.  I'm gonna' bark at it until it dies.

Me:  It's two o'clock in the morning.  I don't think it's going to eat us.  Let's stop barking and go to sleep.

Shucks: :::barks louder:::  nuh-uh, I still think it's dangerous...I better bark some more.  I have super-death-bark powers, and eventually, this thing is gonna' come crashing down.

Me:  :::shuts the bathroom door:::  There, now it's locked in and it won't get us.

Shucks:  Well, ok, but I'm going to lay right here next to the door all night, and if I hear so much as a peep, I'm breaking out my Death Bark and maybe even some Super Paw Shakes.  If that doesn't work, I'll hide in the closet and you can tell me when you've killed it.

Me: zzzzzzz

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(Two days later...)

Shucks:  :::barking maniacally at the bathroom door:::  Do you hear that?  It's talking to me.  It said it's going to eat us.  I told you.

Me:  It's just flushing, it's supposed to do that.

Shucks:  Why hasn't it stopped?  Nobody is in there...unless it's eaten one of the kids!!!! :::GASP:::  :::furious barking:::

Me:  Shut UP!  The kids are asleep...it's an old toilet.  :::jiggles the lever:::  See?  It's not talking anymore, go to sleep.

Shucks: :::giant doggy sigh:::  You have no clue, woman.  I'm tellin' you that thing is going to get us some day.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Three weeks later, landlords have installed a new toilet)

Me:  :::ears bleeding from terrible barking noises:::  WHAT IS THE DEAL????

Shucks:  I TOLD you, I TOLD you...it looks all different.  I told you it was a murderous shape-shifter!  Why don't you listen to me.  Now you go away so I don't accidentally hurt you with my Death Bark and Super Paw Shake.  :::proceeds to blast new toilet to smithereens with Super Death Bark:::