Saturday, June 18, 2005

And a simple $89.10 later, my toilet flushes again!

Yep. This entry is short and sweet folks. (Well, actually, it wasn't that sweet.) But let's just say if you get the chance to be lazy and assume that you can just flush that paper towel down the toilet, cuz after all, it's not THAT big ... think again. It may just cost you $89.10 to enjoy the normal operation of your porcelain throne once again.

Call me lazy, but I was doing some cleaning around the bathroom and decided, "Hey, it's just a simple paper towel, I'll drop it in, let it soak, then it will flush down fine." Well, I might have gotten away with it once, but bonehead me decided to do it with a SECOND paper towel as well. Needless to say, after the first flush, it backed up BIG TIME.

"No problem." I thought. "I'll just break out the handy plunger." It's always worked before.

20 minutes, and a disgusting soupy mess later, I figured, "Okay, this isn't working, I'll go down to the Home Depot and get a snake and fix it in a jiffy."

An hour later, I'm back home gingerly trying to coax the snake to FIRST go thru the 10 or 12 inches of brackish swill, THEN navigate the length of the plumbing in the hope of dislodging the offending paper towels.

Ten minutes of repeated failure later, I figured I'd have to do the UNthinkable, and stick my hands in that mess if I was EVER gonna get that stupid snake to get past the bend in the toilet's plumbing.

Another disgusting ten minutes, and up-to-my-right-arm's-elbow-in-the-odious-slop later, I pulled my arm out of the unearthly mess, disinfected it as best as I could without using an autoclave or resorting to amputation, and called the cheapest plumber I could find in the Yellow Pages.

Now if I could just sell my story to MasterCard, it might have been worth it.

  1. Two paper towels down the toilet? 10 cents...
  2. Driving to the store and buying a useless snake? $12.50...
  3. The cost of finally hiring a plumber to actually unclog the toilet? $89.10...
  4. Learning one of life's little lessons I should have known in the first place? Priceless!

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