Category Archives: personal

So I said to the clerk at Rite Aid, “Merry Christmas to you, you have to work. Merry Christmas to me, I have a clogged toilet.”

And I just realized that this would be an excellent reason for a Wrist to Forehead Sunday.  But it is not.  Once again, my perverse sense of humor comes to my rescue and I think this is awfully funny.  My husband, Steven, is less amused, but you’ll have that in a marriage.

Our toilet has been a cause of minor concern to me for some time now.  Only minor, though, because it won’t go down, we plunge it, it goes down, everything is fine till next time.  Imagine my consternation, then, when I began to plunge it this morning and it KEPT GOING UP!  I hollered to Steven, “I’m having a little problem here,” and plunged frantically.  It stopped going up before flooding the bathroom.  Some water splashed on the floor, largely whooshed out of the toilet from my frantic plunging.

We took turns plunging for what seemed like a long time.  I kept insisting the water was going down by minute amounts, which Steven could not see.  I wondered if I was kidding myself and the agitation caused by the plunging was creating the illusion.  No, it WAS going down. It really, truly was.  At last it was down to a normal level, or perhaps a little lower.  We were frightened to flush it again.  Who knows what could happen?

I remembered a time staying at a cabin in Georgia (it had all the comforts), and the toilet got clogged.  My sister Victoria plunged and plunged it in the night (these things never happen at convenient times, do they?), and I called management as soon as they were open.  They sent over a couple of ladies who poured a whole bottle of Liquid Plumber down the toilet and that was it.  Surprisingly enough, it worked.  I volunteered to go to Rite Aid for supplies, since Steven remembered they would be open.

I got store brand and read the directions on the back.  They recommended pouring half the bottle down a clogged drain, one third of the bottle for a slow drain.  We went with half and set the timer on my watch for 30 minutes, also recommended by the back of the bottle.  That was enough time for both of us to take showers and dress (my cute outfit would have been worthy of a blog post if I wasn’t writing about this).

Steven asked me to remind him which way to turn the knob to turn the water off, if it started to overflow again.  I quoted him the immortal poetry of “righty tighty, lefty loosey.”  We held our breath and flushed.  Then plunged. Alas!  Once the water had finally gone down again, I poured in the rest of the bottle and reset the timer.  By now Steven had to use the toilet again.  I suggested he go to Rite Aid and use theirs, purchasing another bottle of drain stuff, just in case.

During all this, I had phoned my parents a few times, letting them know something of our tribulations.  You see, we where expected at their house for breakfast and presents.  I wondered if that would happen.  I said that if the second half bottle of stuff didn’t work, we would pour in the entire contents of the second bottle and flee the premises.  The bottle had suggested leaving the stuff in overnight for especially stubborn clogs.

After plunging the toilet AGAIN, we did just that.  We had a lovely Christmas.  We were too late for breakfast (I ate something at home, then had a snack at Mom and Dad’s house), but we opened some presents.  Then we went to my sister Cheryl’s house for a Christmas feast.  She really outdid herself, offering an excellent repast.  We opened some more presents, had an especially yummy dessert, then Steven and I took off, in case we needed to plunge and purchase more drain unclogger.

We flushed with high hopes, then plunged in despair. However, I noticed it plunged much more quickly this time.  We flushed and plunged again.  I suggested we keep flushing and plunging, since I really did not want to show my face at Rite Aid again.  It worked!

Is anybody surprised that I just got 700 words out of a clogged toiled (someone will say, “700 of your words?  No wonder the damn thing was clogged!”) (you know who you are).  Merry Christmas!