The Great Sewer Capers *updated*

There are more than a few things in my life and in my families lives that have just gone so incredibly wrong in so many ways that no one could possibly believe it.   This is likely one of those times.

You see it all started about a month ago. The water wasn't draining so well out of the bath tub. This happens every year about this time of year but it generally clears itself up after a few days. When it didn't clear up and it started to get worse we started taking action.

The first thing we tried was pressure washing the lines. I have a handy little tool that goes on the end of a hose, you stick the tool and the hose down the pipe. The tool blows up like a balloon which keeps the water from coming back up the line and then sprays out a super powered stream of water to wash away the blockages. Well, that didn't work.  It just caused the sewage to come up in the bathtub instead. I tried putting it down the bathtub drain and I couldn't get it in far enough to function right. The balloon was blowing up out side of the drain!  So, We gave up for the night.

Over the next couple of days we tried about three different types of Draino, all of which were ineffective.

The next day I take my little hand held manual snake and I try to run it down the toilet which it wont go far, down  the tub, it wont go more than a few inches, ok, fine.  I load up for bear.  I dig out the keys for the crawlspace under the house (I put locks on it years ago because strangers were crawling under houses in our neighborhood to steel copper pipes to recycle even while people were home!)  I open the crawl space and there must have been twenty spider egg sacks sitting on the lid itself... So I attack those with sticks laying around my yard.... I clean up the big spider webs the best I can.  I then go in and change into pants I don't care if I loose, I tuck the ends into my socks and put my sneakers on. I put on my hoody and grab my bandanna to wrap around my nose and mouth, tighten the hood on the hoody down so there is no way a spider is getting in without me seeing it.  I then put a baseball cap on top of all that just to help keep spiders away from my face should they decide to drop down on my head.  Then I add on the rubber gloves and all the gear I'm going to need which includes a flashlight, a bucket and my little 25 foot hand held snake.

Well my crawl space really isn't all that bad compared to most.  The spiders haven't seem to taken it hostage quite as bad as I had anticipated.  I crawl all the way back threw the creepy hole in the cement foundation that splits our house into two area's back to where the plumbing for the toilet is to look for a clean out, there isn't one.  ok... so I go back into the front area where there is a pipe that goes into the ground from the kitchen area that I can easily get to.  I forgot to bring a screwdriver, ugh! ok so I leave all the tools there, crawl back out on my now very tender knees and go find a screwdriver, because I'm awesome enough I'm trying to get this taken care of by myself.

Side note here: Shane has an unreasonable fear of spiders, therefor they seem to swarm towards him as if to tell him they aren't so bad.  Now I on the other hand have had a healthy appreciation of spiders since they saved us from the mosquitoes on our vacation to Alaska many, many years ago (another story I will tell on here eventually).  I didn't mind them being in the garden or outside the house, now if they made it inside they would die.  But Shane's fear and the resulting phenomenon can make even the bravest of spider lovers turn into arachnophobs.   So by me trying to snake the line under the house without his assistance, I was really trying to save us from both being wrapped up and stored for later by a mass of hungry spiders rivaling the experience in the Lord of the Rings trillogy or better yet the Harry Potter series.

So I go back up and I find a screw driver.  I brave the spider infested hole again and make my way back over to the pipe.  I unscrew the brackets, remove the cover and I snake out the line using the bucket to catch anything that comes out. I take the line out the full 25 feet and nothing.  The clog is longer than my line can reach.  oy!  I reattach the pipe and cover. I haul everything out of the hole and I stand out there and undress out of the now filthy and spider infested gear.  I totally had the creepy crawlies and I couldn't even take a shower to get rid of that feeling!

So I text Shane and he responds back with "I thought we agreed to do things the easy way from here on out."  I was hopeful, I really was, but I knew without me having a job right now there was no way we were going to be able to afford it.  But we both independently went online and looked it up, we both saw the deal from Rotorooter on their web site.  I called.  The plumber guy came out.  he did all the same things I did, he crawled under the house he looked for a muck out when he realized he was going to have to go through the toilet he quoted us 350.00 to do the job regardless of what their web site said.  I said thanks but no thanks.. I can rent a machine and do it myself for less than a third of that cost.  Shane texted a while later and told me his buddy at work could loan us his electric snake, but it is self feed.  Now that we knew where to go in at he felt better about us trying it on our own.

It took a couple days to get the snake from his buddy.  When we got the snake we went ahead and tried taking the toilet off.  The problem with taking the toilet off was two fold.  First the nuts were essentially welded on to the bolts. Second, the bolts were spinning freely, so any chance of getting them off easy was gone.  Welp, I called my dad.  He is my go-to man for anything construction related.  "go get a grinding head for your drill." he said, "and grind the nutts off. Don't worry about the finish on the toilet just get the nut off".  We spent days trying to grind the nuts off, DAYS!  We even took turns with the drill between charges.  On the last day I was home alone trying to get the last one off and I "She Hulked it".  I broke, no shattered our only toilet.

Craigslist.com to the rescue! I got on craigslist and did a search for free toilets and I found three.  the first one that responded back was the one I went with.  I waited all afternoon for this woman to tell me I was allowed to go pick it up, it was about 4pm by the time it was loaded in my FJ.  The thing fell sideways on the way home.  I couldn't tell you how freaked I was about the possibility that I had broken not 1 but two toilets in one day, that would have been a new personal record even for me, but alas it was ok when I got it home!

Shane and I spent the majority of the evening trying to snake the line, but we just couldn't seem to get it to go very far.  I had a good scare when my glove got caught on the line and it tried to take my finger off!  Luckily I was smart and took my foot off the power peddle.  After fighting with the cord for a minute or two I realized I could just take the glove off.  Later I discovered you're only supposed to wear leather gloves with this tool so that exact thing doesn't happen!  Shane did most of the work the rest of the night on it, I think we were both scared to let me attack it again.  When it started getting late we admitted defeat for the day and we played computer games the rest of the night.

The next day I was back at it by myself.  I was determined I was going to have a working shower that day!!!  I fought and I fought with that machine.  I couldn't get it to go down the pipe, then I finally got it, but then it started randomly popping out of it's holder and flying all over the place, the thing was trying to get me, it was dangerous!  I took it slow, I tried to force it down, it wasn't any good.  This snake was heavily bent in places and I thought at the time that was what was causing it to pop loose like that, turns out I was wrong, it was binding up in the pipe.

I was the biggest grumpy butt you could have ever witnessed that night.  I haven't had a shower for days.  I had been playing in sewage and under the house for almost two weeks now.  I was pissed, I was stressed, I stunk so bad I don't think even the Ninja Turtles could have been on the same block as me.  Shane loaded me up and took me to a truck stop to shower, I at least felt human again.  I took the next day off from working on sewage lines.  Shane came home that day with a bottle of root killer... we shoved that down the drain and waited.  It didn't work either.

The next day after that I decided that a self feeding line seemed a lot safer and a lot easier than what we were trying to do so I went and rented a 100 foot snake.  The guy at Home Depot got me ramps so I could unload it and load it by myself (this thing is heavy!)  and he loaded it into the FJ for me which was super appreciated!  I get the thing home and unloaded thanks to the ramps.  I manage to get it up the porch step and into the house and then it gets stuck trying to get into my tiny bathroom door!  I eventually managed to 'She Hulk" it into the bathroom (my unpredictable strength does come in handy at  times!).

I got the snake all set up and start feeding it into the pipes.  I couldn't believe how much easier this was!  Then I notice after a while that something was moving in my front yard.  I look out my window and the snake is coming out of my roof and coiling in my front yard! You have got to be kidding me.  I had no idea that was even possible.  I go out the front yard, detangle the sewer snake and then go back in the house to wind it back up.  I just knew it was too good to be true.  I go across the street and grab Mrs. Clause to watch the roof for me in case it comes out again... it did, three more times.  I gave up and called Home Depot, they suggested I bring this snake back and get the smaller diameter 75 foot snake.  So I did I got this thing loaded back in the FJ went back  to the store switched out machines.  they gave me a free pair of leather gloves and this time I got the accessories I needed to do the job right.  They also didn't charge me for renting the big snake and reset my time, I'm so thankful to them for treating me right, at a time I was so vulnerable.  I came home and this time I was able to get it down the right pipe!  I snaked out the whole 75'..... and my drain was still clogged.

No.  This is not ok.  This is what god does when he is bored.  He throws stupid stuff at us like this and laughs and laughs and laughs.  This really should have been solved with one of the first three snakes but no, I'm on snake number 4 and I still can't fix this stupid drain.  I went back to home depot and returned the snake, Shane helped me load it up this time.  The guy at the counter gave me an additional discount even above and beyond not charging me for the first snake.  Again, I was so thankful that they were so understanding during this challenging time for us.

The next day Shane talked me into calling RotoRooter again... this time to put a camera down there to tell us if we have a break in our line and if so, where?  The guy came out.  took a look at our setup, refused to do the free camera inspection and gave us a quote of $2500.00+  to build us a cleanout.  NO THANK YOU Mr. RotoRip-off!

We spent the weekend trying to figure out what we were going to do.  We were talking about digging up and replacing the sewer line ourselves.  I already had a call into the city to see what a permit was going to cost and another call into the utilities so we could get the sewer line marked.  our appointment was Wednesday of the next week for the utilities to come out and let us know where we needed to dig.  The guy came out and he was really sweet.  He showed us all kinds of things and gave us really good and helpful information. Things like our pipes are made of clay and they are known for having to be replaced.  Thank you very much to the cheap asses who built these homes that stuck us with a problem we can not afford.

It was the next day I decided I needed a second opinion on the work.  I wanted a local plumber not some national corp.  I called Affordable Plumbing.  I can only completely RAVE about them!!!  They were amazing! The guy came out and snaked my line for $125.00  the blockage was at 80 feet!   He gave me a 30 day guarantee and then the following Monday the guy with the camera snake came over to check on the line FREE OF CHARGE! Sure enough we have roots growing up into the line at approx 40 feet.

We have a break in the line.  IF we were to dig the hole ourselves and then have them come in, pull the permit, fix the pipe and fill it back in.  They will charge us $900.00.  If they do the whole thing for us we're looking at $1500.00.  He put my newish free toilet on for me, showing how much I need to buy a new one because this free toilet needs to be in the trash.  He still put it on for me and it sort of works and we are able to take showers again for now!  We have bought ourselves a little time, now I just need to find a job so I can afford for them to come in and do the work.  I don't want to dig a 3-4' deep hole that is several feet long.

*Update* We called the plumbers back in to do the whole thing... It took another 5 days for us to have the ability to use our sewer line again... they came in, replaced a piece of pipe and added in a couple of clean outs.  Then they send a guy in the next day to blow out the line with a super powered water pressure gadget hose.  It took him like 20 minutes and it worked like a charm.  It's been a few weeks now so I think it is safe to say that
 we are ok for at least a year.

Coping techniques

I have a tendency to be moody, have anxiety, PTSD and I've been through my fair share of emotional trauma, pain and suffering... These are the things that I use constantly with success to improve the quality of my life and survive when things feel a little overwhelming.

Go be around other people (for loneliness):  

If you have friends that are available GREAT!  But there are so many times when I found myself somewhere new where I was lonely, depressed and I had been hermiting for just too long.  Go to an arcade or a movie.   You don't have to talk to anyone else, but sometimes just being around other humans makes you feel just a little more human and a little less lonely.  

Deep Breathing (for getting through the next few seconds without exploding):  

Close your eyes and take a deep breath, in through the nose and out through the mouth, your exhale should take twice as long as your inhale.  So if you breath in for three seconds you should breath out for 6.  As you are breathing in imagine good things coming into your life... very much like making a wish.  As you are breathing out imagine all the bad stuff is flowing out of your body and out of your life.  

Grounding (for anxiety attacks):

Close your eyes and concentrate.  Touch 5 different things, feel their texture and density... be as detailed as possible.  Listen for 4 different sounds, how loud or soft are they?  try to identify 3 smells in the air around you.  Open your eyes and try to find two colors that are soothing to you.  and finally taste something,  your hand, the air, your meal... it doesn't matter.  The point of this exercise is to get you back to the here and now, to get you back into the moment you are living at this second.  

Shielding (For when you are afraid):  

Sit on the floor with your legs crossed and your eyes closed.  You want to imagine yourself as a tiny tree seedling.  Imagine the roots coming out of  the parts of your body that is touching the floor and growing into the earth... imagine them going all the way to the planets core.  Once your roots reach the planets core imagine that energy comes up through your roots up into your body and then use that energy to grow that tree up around you.  As the layers of this tree grow they can be different colors, and you can have as many different layers as you want.  Make each layer have a different purpose but always try to keep it positive.  Examples of intentions you might include would be, "Please protect me, absorb any negative energy directed at me, turn it into positive energy and send it back out into the world"  That is a good one if you think people are wishing bad things on you... or "please help me make the best decisions for myself and my family."  once you have all the layers I want I like to imagine the layers turning and once they click into place my tree is crystalline in my mind... very much like a diamond.  I then let the extra energy out into the world to do good and help people be happy.  I imagine that tree is up all day long.  

Find something to be grateful for (when feeling mad at the world or uncontrollably sad):  

It doesn't matter how small it is... it could be a pretty colored crayon, or a beautiful flower.  You could just be happy that the pain isn't worse or that you have food in your belly.  Just the simple act of LOOKING for something to be grateful for is scientifically proven to help get you in a better mood.  

Get your Saratonin levels up (for when sad, mad, grumpy or moody):

Eating Chocolate is normally my go-to for this particular ill, for some drinking beer can be a substitute to eating chocolate.  Other things that can help are exercising even just a walk around the block can do wonders.  Having sex is a good one that is consistent on how much it helps.  

   

Take a nap (for when the day is going all wrong or again sad, mad, grumpy or moody): 

Lay down and take a 15 minute power nap, or longer if you have time.  I have found that it can reset the day and give you a kind of do-over.  

Find something... ANYTHING to laugh about (When feeling depressed and/or sad):

Laughter is an amazing thing... you can watch the movie Patch Adams and get the full run down on the healing properties of laughter. I don't care if it is a dark sense of humor that you need to engage or if you have to google funny animals or call a friend and beg them for a joke... find a way to laugh.  It is a distraction from your problems, it makes you feel better.  It doesn't solve anything but it can give you a different perspective on life in that moment.  

Building a spinning wheel!

I've had rabbits for the last two years.  I had new zealand meat rabbits, the intent was to get closer to our food source.  Unfortunately we weren't able to do the deeds necessary to get them on the dinner table so they ended up more as pets.  So, meat rabbits aren't really doing us any good so I decided it might be a good idea to change directions and I started researching angora rabbits.   I found one named Huckabee for sale on craigslist, I also found a nice cage I could use to keep him indoors with us on craigs list. Everything fell into place and Easter Sunday (just coincidence)  we went and picked up both cage and rabbit.   

Now I love to crochet and knit.  I love how the yarn feels between my fingers.  I like having something useful like dolls, socks, hats and bags to use when I'm done with a project.  I love yarn, the various colors and textures. I don't like the high price tag that goes along with the nicer balls of yarn that I can't afford.  It also seems to me that I'm constantly looking for yarn that doesn't even exist.  So me with my self sustainable living mindset decided that I was going to learn how to make yarn using the fur my rabbit naturally sheds.  

Well the first lesson learned was coming home to bunny urin in a cage that wasn't really designed the best for cleaning was not a pleasant thing to come home to every night.  So I had to give in and agree that Ben the bunny is going to live outside in the original rabbit hutch, why work harder than I really have to?  I work insane hours for stupid little money time is a precious commodity I don't have to spare right now.  I already have a great rabbit hutch outside I decided to utilize it. Shane who tried to tell me this from the get go was laughing at me as I reluctantly told him he was right... again (there has been a lot of that lately... I'm not doing a very good job of listening).  Ben actually seems happier in the larger cage too.  

Then I decided that I needed a spinning wheel to spin up my new angora yarn.  So pulled up amazon and was flabbergasted to discover that they are really freaking expensive!  I checked ebay and craigslist and other web sites... I either came up empty handed or more of the same expensive options.... I just wasn't ready to financially commit that much to this experiment.  So I looked at plans for building a spinning wheel and that is when I found the free plans for the Dodec spinning wheel that claimed you can build it for $7. 

I have an amazing friend that loves this kind of crafty stuff as much as I do and is also a bit into the whole self sustainable living too so I decided I would make her one as well and give it to her as a gift.  Although I was really hoping to keep it down to $14 for the two of them, I know with me it just wasn't realistic.   Now the plans were a few years old, so add inflation and a bit more for my usual splurge for a bit of pizzazz and I was counting on it coming out to about $25 - $50 total for two spinning wheels... and that ended up being about right!  Still not bad when the next closest thing I found online was around $450!  

So one day after work, even though I was completely dead on my feet, Shane and I went to Home Depot to shop for the materials that we would need to build the amazingly cheap Dodec Spinning Wheels.  I had printed out the free instructions HERE.  It would be another few days until I had a day off to be able to work on it at all.  I was so excited when I was finally able to attack this project!  

I started by cutting all the pieces for both spinning wheels.  This was NOT an easy feat because all I have is a circular saw.  I cut most of the pieces using the back porch as my work table and there is one rip where you cut the wood in half length wise at a 30 Degree angle... I shoved the wood in my fence at an angle so I could make that cut.  necessity is the mother of invention... right? Well the saw bucked back and hit me in the head, I was ok but it did scare me a bit.  I'm very pleased to announce I do still have all my body parts after this endeavor.  Regardless a table saw is in our near future, this isn't the first time we have needed one.    

The next thing I did was sand all the pieces down... I didn't get to them all that day, it took me a few more days to get back to the project to finish sanding.  Then I colored all of the wood, I used rubbing alcohol as my medium and food color as my paint.  I played with the colors until I found what I liked and I used q tips for the smaller pieces and a sponge brush for the bigger ones.  Some of the pieces I had to go over several times to get the desired color. This process also took several days, drying, recoloring a few days later because the wood absorbed all of the color.  

Then it was time to put the pieces together... I had been looking forward to this part for several days when I finally had time to do it and then I wasn't feeling on my game and it showed in my craftsmanship, nailing things together and it not staying, gluing pieces on the wrong way, making extra holes. We ended up going back to home depot for screws instead of nails and it was just one error after another.  In the end I gave up for the day, took it all apart and came back to attack it on another day.  

A few days later I came back to the project, fresh.  My head was working right and I was determined to to get these things together and do it properly.  I got the bases together and we worked on figuring out the template size we needed to make the wheels.  The next morning I conquered the wheels... which was highly intimidating to me, I knew if I screwed them up that the whole wheel wasn't going to work.  Fortunately this design is highly forgiving and my wheels came out pretty good if I say so myself!   They are painted so that it looks like a rainbow when it spins, I love them!  

Anyway, The next few days were designated to buying a few extra parts and building the spindles and drive band and putting a sealer on the wheels so they wouldn't loose their color... That wasn't so bad, but getting the wheels to work right once everything was put together was terrifying!  This was a lot of work and suddenly my wheel is rubbing on the post and wouldn't spin right and the drive band wouldn't stay on and one of the spindles is cockeyed and wont spin right either.... spent several days and a lot of frustration thinking about all the problems and tinkering with the adjustments until I got them to even remotely work right.... That is still a work in progress... but they are working well enough I could try my hand at turning some of that bunny fur into yarn... what I got was a partially clumpy, lumpy mess in places and a twisted too tight thin little thread of a yarn in other places... it occurred to me at this point that bunny hair might not be the best medium to learn with... HUMPH! 

So I go onto Ravelry.com where I find myself a spinning forum and I post a question on there about best material to learn with and I realize as I'm posting this that I really haven't done any due diligence at all. I haven't watched any video's on spinning apart from the one on the dodec, I certainly have never seen it done in person, I have purchased a live animal that takes quite a bit of care for this project.  I have built two entire spinning wheels and invested money, time and resources into it... and I have no idea what I am doing!  My poor Shane is just sitting here laughing at me and my crazy antics the whole time.  The thing is this, I'm excited!  I'm excited to be learning something new. I am excited that I get to create something I will use once I'm done.  Yeah this may be a comedy of errors, like learning after the wheels are built that I could rent or borrow other more professional spinning wheels to see if I even liked it but I got a lot of experience out of building these wheels. Not to mention the fact that I feel for the first time in well over a year that I'm actually starting to live a little again.  I'm not just sitting on my ass watching endless hours of tv.  I actually have something to show for my time, and that makes me happy.

Gardening

So with all this time off I was going stir crazy.  I started collecting pallets with a friend's help.   With those pallets I built a rabbit hutch and a fence. 

I also had hundreds of plants started in the house. That I planted in mid may to early June.... I had the most awesome garden by far to date...please excuse the mess, the projects took priority over everything!