Friday, the Shiteenth

Friday, the 13th marked our sixth day of plumbing issues. No one was happy, and I was extremely... uncomfortable... as I waited for the plumbers to arrive at 9:00 a.m. I mentioned the "healthy turds," but did I mention that I'm also very "regular." That "regular" time is somewhere in the 7:00-9:00 am block of time, generally speaking, and there was nowhere to go to the bathroom without going door to door asking to use one of the neighbors' bathrooms. No, I didn't do that!
Fortunately for everyone else in my family, they all had somewhere else to go off to to take care of business.

Let me fill in some details here while we wait for these plumbers to show up, okay?
"My" plumber is a guy who owns his own company. He's mostly a one-man show in a van, though he does sometimes have a guy who works with him. When he suggested "calling in the big guns," he recommended a larger company, a company that has a lot of plumbers working for it. More equipment and all of that jazz. The guy they sent out to do the estimate on Thursday was their No. 2 guy.
Yes, seriously, that's what the woman I spoke told me when I called, "We're sending you our number two guy."
He did the estimate but, he told me while he was here, he would not be the one to come on Friday to do the repair. He was going to be unavailable. The guy who was coming out, with his assistant, was somewhere farther down the chain.

9:30 arrived but there were no plumbers.

They finally showed up at something like 9:47. No, I wasn't watching the clock!
Not exactly.

The guy comes in and looks over the situation. He wants to get under the house to look at the pipes which is a whole separate challenge, because, guess what, there's no access point to under our house from outside the house. What kind of crazy is that? The only way to get under our house is through a trap door in the closet in my daughter's room, so I had to clean out the bottom of her closet so that the guy could stick his head down there and look around for two minutes. Yeah, she wasn't happy with me for that.

The end result of all of this was to tell me that the guy who made the estimate was wrong and that the job couldn't be done except to do it this other way which... basically, he wanted to double to triple the cost of the high end of the original estimate. Which makes me wonder how much of that he gets to keep personally, because he sold it hard. But fuck that! None of what he was saying aligned with anything that "my" plumber had said and certainly didn't go along with what the No. 2 guy had said. Needless to say, I was angry.

I called the company with the intention of speaking with the owner only to find that the guy was already on the phone with the owner. So I asked the woman about what the guy was saying, about it being an impossible job, and whether it was impossible or just impossible for him. In short, was it outside of his skill set? She said, actually, it was entirely within his skill set; he just didn't want to do it. She told me that she would have the owner call me when he got off the phone the shitty plumber who was trying to scam me. But he never called...

I'm assuming that some sort of communication happened between the owner and the woman I had spoken with because, a few minutes later, shithead comes back in and tells me they'll do it for the original estimate, the high end of it, but, still.

Anyway, it was after 11:00 a.m. before any actual work started on the 9:00 a.m. appointment time after all of the shenanigans.

Which almost brings us to the end of this tale. They did get everything fixed by 5:00. -ish. Because it was actually 5:30 before the guy with the shitty attitude left because he tried to pull another set of shenanigans before leaving, but he lost that one, too, because I walked up on him on a phone call with the owner during which he was lying about things that had been said but, when he saw me, he had to quit lying and do what was agreed to.

The other thing of note has to do with what the previous occupants of our house DIYed our plumbing into. Remember how I said we had no clean out? As it turns out, we did have a clean out; it was just buried under a paving stone going into the backyard. Also, it was no good.
Look:

I'm realizing I should have labeled this drawing. heh
The vertical pipe there is the main sewer line running down to the street. The curved pipe with the arrows is the line coming out from under our house. What I want to call your attention to is the other "pipe" with the rings around it. That's not an underground pipe at all. That's the drain pipe from our roof gutter. That pipe is just inside the gate to the backyard, and, I'm assuming, that area would flood during our winter rains. I don't actually know, because the previous occupants attached a sheathe to the end of the pipe (the striped bit in the drawing) and tied it into the sewer line. Totally out of code, of course, which the plumber happily pointed out to me when they discovered what had been done.

So, see, the previous occupants dug up the sewer line, added a clean out (the circular "cap" at the top of the drawing) which only runs in the direction to the street and DUCT TAPED the gutter drain into the sewer line. I have to assume that the clean out was in case roof debris stopped up the sewer line, which has never happened to us, but I can see the danger in what they did. For us, though, the sewer line block was up under the house and the clean out we had there completely unusable. The plumbers had to take all of that out and put in a new line with a clean out that would both go under the house and down to the street. The gutter drain now drains into the yard like normal gutters do and, since it rained a few days after all of this was done, I got to experience the standing water just inside the gate. And there's no paving stone there, now, either, because that's where the new clean out is.

You know, if it's not one problem, it's some other problem, but at least we have draining water in our house again. Right?

It's Been a Shitty Week (wait for it...)

Today is Friday, September 13 (as I write, not as you read), so I suppose this is an appropriate thing to be writing today. Though it may turn out to be that today is the best day of the week, to a certain extent. But we'll get to that in a moment. Before we do, though, let's go back to last weekend...

Sunday night (that would be the 8th), my daughter took a shower. She didn't tell anyone that the shower didn't drain, but I discovered it a little while after she was finished when I found the water from her shower in the other bathtub in the house. Or half of it, anyway, since, when I looked, her tub still had standing water, too. Verdict: a clogged sewer line. All of the water in the house, therefore, was draining up into the bathtubs.

I could go into some depth with the details of what happened next, but we'd be here all day, so I'll skip to the part where, the next morning, I got in touch with a plumber friend (seriously, he came out to fix my hot water heater last year and we bonded over politics (not that we hang out or anything, but we exchange text messages every once in a while)) who came out to fix the issue. Which he did but only after seeing how kind of fucked up my house is due to all of the DIY stuff the previous owners did to it. Specifically, he got to see up close how they screwed up the plumbing.

Seriously, my house has some things in it that there is no other way to say than, "That's fucked up."

So he unclogged the sewer line but caused a leak in the bathroom sink because it didn't quite go back together correctly because the sink had been one of those DIY projects of the previous owners. Of course, we didn't know there was a leak...

...until Wednesday morning (which, by the way, was after (of course) I'd cleaned the tub in the master bathroom of all of  the... stuff... that had come up into it on Monday (I say "stuff" because I'm not sure what some of it was) and is some of what I skipped over telling you because Monday, in comparison, turned out to be a mild day), when the sewer line clogged up again. I discovered this after going to the bathroom because, when I flushed the toilet, water came up in the bathtub and the toilet didn't flush. So I texted my plumber friend and cleaned the stuff out from the cabinet under the sink so that he could run his snake thing in there again. Which is when I discovered that the pipes there were leaking and the towels were damp from the water.

However, before he could get to my house, the sewer line cleared itself, so the plumber said he'd come by later in the day to look at the sink since there was no longer an emergency. He did have other jobs already lined up despite the fact that he had been about to push them off till later in the day to come and fix my problem, which is what he had done on Monday. See, he's a good friend. Remember that when we get to later in the week.

But he didn't make it by on Wednesday. It got late enough that I needed to start cooking dinner, so I called him and told him not to worry about it and that he could work the sink in on Thursday if he had time. It was just a little drip, so I wasn't worried about getting it fixed on an emergency basis. His main concern was that he had caused the leak and didn't want to leave it like that, so he told me he'd come by first thing Thursday morning.

Thursday...

The only thing I can think is that Thursday decided that Friday the 13th gets too much attention and that it was going to give the 13th a run for its money.

Here's the thing with Thursday:
Thursday night (which would be last night) was the first opera of the season for my wife and me. I had a lot to do on Thursday, which included doing laundry and taking a shower, not to mention some errands to run outside the house. Thursday was already going to be a busy day.

When my wife got out of the shower on Thursday morning, she told me that it had drained slowly but, when I went into the bathroom to use the toilet, the tub was clear so I shrugged it off and sat down to do my business. What else was I supposed to do?
And let me be clear: Yes, I was taking a shit.
Yes, it's important for you to know that.
[And just as an aside here, you should know that I have what my plumber referred to as "healthy turds," and, if you look up a chart of what a healthy turd is as opposed to unhealthy turds, mine, actually, do fall into the range of "healthy." At any rate, as a plumber, he's in the somewhat unique position of seeing lots of turds, and he was impressed with mine because he doesn't see a lot of what would be considered "healthy" turds.]
Anyway... I flushed the toilet when I completed my business, and... it didn't flush. In fact, a little bit of water gurgled up in the bathtub. I sighed and, hoping, grabbed the plunger and tried to get the toilet to flush, but just a little more water gurgled up into the bathtub. Clear water, just so you know, and it wasn't all that much, just up around the drain.

As I was trying to decide what to do, my phone rang; it was my plumber letting me know that he was on his way over to deal with the sink... I got to let him know that the sewer line was, for really reals, clogged up again...

And, you know what? I'm out of time and this is getting beyond the length that people like to read in a... sitting...? Do people read blog posts while on the toilet? Like my dad used to read the newspaper almost exclusively in the bathroom? Huh, I wonder.
And you will have to keep wondering what happened, too. Until tomorrow, anyway...

The Dating Change (Change: part 6)

Who here likes dating?
No, I don't mean going on dates; I mean that period in your life when you have no significant other and you are "dating."
No one?
Good, because that's not what I'm talking about.
You wouldn't want to listen to me talk about that anyway except to learn the ways not to do it. It was never my strong suit.

What I am talking about is dating your significant other. That can have it's own special set of challenges. Just by the way in case you haven't figured that out.

My wife and I figured out a long time ago that we needed to set aside time together on a daily basis to keep our relationship strong and stay connected. Probably, as you read this, you're thinking, "Well, of course! Everyone knows that." But, really, how many of you do it?

No, I don't mean that each of you are in the same room together while you both do your own things. No, I am not talking about watching the same TV show together from your separate places while you mindlessly stare. Or even sitting next to each other while you mindlessly stare.
No, I am not even talking about working together on some household DIY project where your attention is on the project and telling your partner how s/he is doing it wrong.
I'm not even talking about going to the movies, because that's usually about as engaging as watching TV together (seriously, guys, ask your women if they consider that a "good" date; I think you're going to be surprised when you get a bunch of "no"s).

What I am talking about is time together when you are actively engaged with your partner.

So, yeah, we do that.
But sometimes even that is not quite enough. Let me explain:

For years, my wife and I have made it a priority to spend time together each evening. Sometimes, that even includes watching a TV show on DVD, but we don't do it mindlessly or ignore each other while we're watching. However, as my daughter has gotten more involved in softball and we spend about eight months of the year with softball practice two to three days a week (mostly on weeknight evenings) plus games and tournaments, our evenings became rather... routine. Which means through 2014 and the first half of 2015, most of what we did was watch a DVD on the nights we were able to do anything because, on softball nights, I generally get in too late for us to have time to do anything significant, including watching a DVD. And, honestly, during softball, I spend a lot of the time just being tired (it's not all because of softball; there's also the part where I get up at 5am everyday).

As I said in the first post, I'm pretty good with routine. My wife? Not so much.

So it was that I realized sometime last spring that my wife was bored with what had become the softball routine. I don't actually think she realized it herself, to tell the truth. In her (paraphrased) words, everything was fine. And that was true. It was "fine." But she was bored with it just being fine. Maybe I was too, although I think it all really had more to do with the fact that everything in our lives had gotten to be where it all revolved around softball.

Those of you who have been reading for a while may have noticed some changes in the blog through the second half of last year in relation to things I was doing, like seeing new bands, or going to roller derby, or taking my wife away for the weekend, or going to the opera. Well, all of that was to shake up our lives a bit, our dating life specifically, and make things more interesting. It was all a big deal.

It was all a big deal, because I did a lot of the planning for this stuff, something my wife has traditionally been responsible for. It changed the dynamic and has allowed us to, together, expand our horizons and be more free to do and try new things.

There was a moment when we were away for that weekend when we were sitting at dinner and discussing, I believe, dessert, but not just dessert, because the conversation involved something about the kids... I suppose it doesn't really matter what. The point is that while we were discussing whether we should do whatever the thing was we were discussing, I looked at my wife and said something about how we were away with no kids and no other responsibilities for that one twenty-four period and finished the statement with, "We can do whatever we want." Whatever we want. It was a big moment. When our schedules are so often run by what our kids are doing and we are putting things that we want to do aside because there is a softball tournament or a choir rehearsal or whatever, it was very freeing to acknowledge, "We can do whatever we want."

I suggest you try it.
Really.
Even with being back in softball and everything else right now, that one statement has continued to change our lives.

Firsts Changes (Change: part 4)

One of the big deal parts of 2015 for me is that it was a year full of "firsts." As we get older, "firsts" tend to trickle away into nothingness. Part of that is just part of the dynamic of being older. I mean, it's easy to have first events when you're a kid, because everything is new, so it just gets to be more difficult to "find" things you haven't done before. Or so it would seem to our "logical" minds. You can't have pizza for the first time if you've been eating it for 40 years, and throwing some broccoli on it hardly counts as making it a "first."

That said, there are so many things under the sun that, mostly, it's just because we get used to how things are and the way we do things and quit trying to try and do new things. As I said back at the beginning of all of this, change is uncomfortable and most people don't like to do it. But I set out in 2015 to do new things; I just didn't know some of the ways that was going to happen. So, in no particular order, things I did for the first time in 2015:

1. I fixed a toilet!
This is actually a big deal. I'm not the handy guy around the house. I don't really fix things beyond clogged toilets (Yes, I know how to wield a plunger.) and things of about that level. We don't have one of those people in our household. We lived in an apartment complex for nearly 10 years, and that was fine when we lived there, because we could just call maintenance if there was a problem with anything.

But, when you can hear your toilet leaking, you need to fix it or call a plumber. Or, well, lie awake all night listening to it. Yes, the door was closed. I have good ears and am a light sleeper.

Now, I'm not going to get into the details of this, but, actually, this should have been a pretty easy fix. Should have been. But... Let's just say things deteriorated. One thing of note: Our house is full of the DIY projects of the previous occupants, none of them done well or with any kind of materials you'd call "quality." So what should have been an easy fix turned into something much more... complicated... and took most of a week and three or four trips to Home Depot to accomplish.

But, hey! I fixed the toilet!
No, I don't care if you're not impressed.

2. Opera!
My wife has loved the opera since she was in high school. It was a field trip that did it. And the spectacle. And the costumes. And the singing. Maybe if I'd been to the same performance that she went to, I would have developed a love for opera, too.

Instead, my first experience with opera was during college and was with a travelling opera company that came to my college. It was less spectacle and more foreign film, and I didn't love it. Or even like it. Seriously, it was like watching a French film with no subtitles. One of those where the people only sit around and talk. Maybe the talk is fascinating but, if you don't know French, you'll never know.

So, due to my stated dislike of opera, my wife decided that we would just not ever go to the opera rather than go and have a bad experience of it with me. Through the years, I've tried to change her mind about trying it out with me, but she has been resistant to that. Finally, last year, I changed her mind (I think I said something like "You could continue to never go to the opera and never get to go to the opera, or you could, at least, just give it a try with me."), and we went to the opera! Four times!

Yes, it's safe to say that I like it.

We have one more coming up in June, and we're looking at next season, right now, trying to decide what we're going to see.

3. Camping
Despite the fact that we go camping in the Trinity Alps every year, I have traditionally not been a fan of camping. You can blame that on some childhood traumas, things like being hit in the face with a fishing pole and getting a fishhook in my eye during a trip with a friend's family and having my tent flooded due to bad instructions from my scout master on my one and only boy scout camping trip. Plus there's the fact that I hate not having access to a bathroom. The compromise to get me to go willingly to Trinity was that we rent cabins for that trip (which is awesome!).

My wife, though, likes camping. She grew up camping with her family and has positive memories of it from her childhood. You know, we actually sort of went camping on our honeymoon, but I look at that as more of just sleeping in a tent, because we were at a music festival and didn't cook or anything. We just bought food at the event.

I think this might have been the most surprising thing I did last year from my wife's perspective: I told her, "I want to go camping with you." To say the least, there was some amount of discussion after that one as my wife tried to figure out if either I'd gone crazy, been kicked in the head by a horse, or been replaced by an alien or replicant life form.

The problem, then, was that we didn't have any camping gear because why own camping gear if you don't camp, right? Also, you don't want to spend a bunch of money on something that you might never use again so buying a bunch of new camping gear wasn't exactly practical. We decided on a method of car camping which is actually pretty nice. Set up is quick and easy and the car is quite cozy. Of course, you have to have the right kind of car.

It was a great trip, even the night it rained. Many of the pictures I've been posting recently are from that trip, in fact. We plan to do more car camping, at least a couple of trips a year. Car camping allows us to be more mobile and spend more time doing things other than making and breaking camp. And, of course, there is no tent to clean out and store when you get home. I did actually intend to do a post about the trip but, at this point, that probably won't actually happen, so you'll just have to enjoy the photos.