Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging and that is what happened to me in the last couple of weeks.  The main things are Lily (of course she’s my main distraction) and work, I try to get in as much work time as possible which usually amounts to 2 hours a day.  Since Lily is my first priority I try to only work when she’s playing happily or napping and since she doesn’t really nap much I don’t get much time in, oh well.  On top of these two important things I’ve had two other dramas or at least semi-drama stuff keeping me away.  And that is what I’m here to tell you about tonight.

First the simple one.  I turned my computer on one morning last week, I think it was Monday and while Waldo and I talked I started smelling something really weird.  We determined it was my computer and so I turned it off and used Waldo’s all day.  After work my Knight in shining geeky armor pulled my tower out of my desk and started inspecting it.  We realized my power supply fan wasn’t running, turned it off and ordered a new one.  It came in Thursday evening and pretty much the second he got off work Waldo went to work putting the new power supply in because he wanted his computer back.  This whole power supply crap is what kept me from uploading Lily’s Monday picture.

The other drama that I’ve been dealing with is a whole lot stinkier and energy draining.  Oh funny I just went and got a piece of angel food cake and when I got back reread that last sentence and realized how accidentally funny I am.  The situation was energy draining but that was the only thing draining.  You see the whole time we’ve lived in this rental the kitchen sink has drained really slowly.  At first we used drain cleaner and it would fix the problem temporally.  Then I bought one of those tiny plungers and that along with the drain cleaner would work and then all of the sudden not a darn thing worked. And just in case you are wondering this wasn’t a problem because we were putting food down the drain, we are very careful to not let stuff go down especially since we don’t have a garbage disposal and the drains have always been slow. So a month or two ago it started taking about an hour for the water to drain and then one day I was nursing Lily and the dish washer was running and I hear the very distinct sound of water hitting the floor. I checked on it and sure enough the sinks were full and water was running onto the floor. I swore a blue streak at Waldo on AIM, I was so mad.

The water hitting the floor started a very long annoying DIY streak at Casa Jinxyisms. Yes we are renters but didn’t want to call our landlord because they have been weird about repairing stuff in the past and just didn’t want to deal with it. My Dad suggested a shop vac so Lily and I went to Home Depot and bought one, it worked great to empty the water out of the sink but it did nothing for the clog. We bought a cheap pipe snake, it did nothing. My Mom said that you can rent stuff like a snake so I found a place in town and rented a pretty hefty one and can you take a wild guess at what happened? Not a darn thing, well Waldo did pull some white flakes out of the pipes. Oh and during the whole snaking fun Waldo also took a lot of pipes apart and really stinky water went all over the basement and him. I felt so bad for him. This DIY plumbing adventure took over a week and during it my cousin Melissa and my Dad kept telling me to call our landlord but we just didn’t want to. Oh and after Waldo got done with in the basement with the hefty snake he burst into the living room stating that he was going to the hardware store to get some really scary acid that is labeled for professional plumbers. When he got home he poured it down the drain and I went and got in the shower, when I got out I inquired about it’s effectiveness and was totally shocked when he told me that the water isn’t draining at all. I mean this stuff is sold with a protective plastic bag around it and when you pour it down the drain you have to put a pot over the drain in case water volcanos out of the drain or something like that.

At this point I gave in and called our landlord the next day. Mr. Landlord came over the next evening and had a bottle under his arm of the same scary acid and when I told him we already tried it he was shocked. I told him everything we had done and he left because he knew he didn’t have what he needed and wasn’t going to be able to come back till after the weekend (it was Friday by then). We weren’t happy with the fact that he wasn’t coming back till Monday or Tuesday but we had called the real plumber (yes that’s right we were going to pay out of pocket to have a plumber come, that was where I drew the line) and knew that Monday afternoon was the soonest we could get a appointment. So we ate more fast food and waited. Tuesday afternoon Mr. Landlord showed back up and worked and toiled in the basement cutting pipes apart and making the whole house stink. In the end he had to replace about 12 feet of pipe because the guy he had hired to paint the house before we moved in had cleaned his paint brushes in the kitchen sink night after night and the pipes were full of dried white paint. Waldo looked at one of the pipes and was amazed that we ever had water drain at all, he said there was about this (hold your index finger and thumb very close together) much room under the paint for drainage.

After Mr. Landlord left I cooked my little heart out I was so happy to have a usable kitchen again.

The moral of the story is DIY plumbing sucks.