An Exciting Night

The following is a email from my dad describing the rather busy events of 2 nights ago...


I have another home repair gone wrong story.

Binkers who often has some impractical ideas regarding food preparation starting from a far out base due to the attack by the cancer and her desire to strike back with Kampucha and natural foods, produced a bowl of strawberries yesterday. I don't mean a little cereal bowl, but a multi-loaf bread making bowl about 18 inches across. the finished bowl sits in the refrig and awaits our serving spoon, but the preparation required removing the stems.

"That was easy." She took a shortcut and placed the stems in the sink grinder, and they flowed out but backed up behind the flow so that the sink in the garage that serves the washing machine was unable to drain. sewer line plugged with ground strawberry stems so sink filled up. Didn't overflow as your sharp eyed Mom caught it in the act at 10 PM when all were ready for bed.

Snapping into action while Binkers and Charity continued to glaze with concentration on Alias reruns and Mom retired to bed. the attack commenced with the plunger that makes the great sucking sound, but no progress. so resourceful me dressed as home plumber in bathrobe and barefooted started by bailing out sink and throwing the water in the yard. Everything alright so far with exception of the water spilled in the transfer from sink to yard.

It gets messier but the real fun starts later. I have entertained myself with the recollection ,but the others were blind to the humor. Charity thinks the pipe went by her bed,but it was far from there as it doesn't rise to the second floor.

so now the sink is bailed so it may be removed allowing your trusty home-plumber to get to work at the intestine of trouble. the line from washing machine sink to sewer runs under kitchen sink with a counter flow connection where the strawberry stem collected in the line under the house. the garage sink must be removed to allow access to the sewer line with the hose with a patented swelling bladder at the end. Insert hose with bladder, oops , hose will not work as it has had special fitting prohibiting entry into pipe as the fitting too large. Trip to Long's, open all night, for a hose with smaller fitting, $15 , and it is now 1130 PM and all seem asleep except Mom who comes out to confront me,"I knew you would not let this go until morning."

The new hose worked fine and the obstruction was removed by the pressure of the vibrating flow of the water that could not back up in the pipe and flood the garage due to swollen bladder so the obstacle had to move. all is fine ,but a little noisy under the room where Mom slept and may others were alerted to the sound of rushing water and the "vibration at midnight" in the pipes.

All are confined to bed and "sleeping" when I pull the hose out and about to put the sink back and I press the keys in my pocket and set off the car alarm. No one reacts to a car alarms as they are now routine, but not at midnight, as all awake with a start and shudder in our home from the midnight alarm. They slept through the vibration and clamour but not the routine car alarm. Charity came down, Alice (the dog) let out a howl and Mom arose from bed. Then the fun began. I was outside on the side of the house punching the car alarm button to stop the noise and Mom was, unknown to me, out on the street doing the same. The result? I would turn it off and she would punch again and turn it on! That went on for some time until I realized we were working at cross purposes. The neighborhood slept through, but our household was wide awake.

I could have use their service earlier, but they were all "asleep." Mom convinced me to lay off until morning to replace sink fittings, and I went to bed at 1PM ready to resume in the morning. As I removed my clothes putting the pants with car keys in pocket back on the chair it must have awakend the car alarm again, as it was soon beeping again and Binkers was alerted to the attack.

I had to tell you as you could be more objective than my housemates.

Actually the car alarm went off 3 more times that night, and as dad can sleep through anything, mom had her hearing aides out and Charity's room is far from the street I was the only one who could turn it off (although I did hear Alice's sympathetic boo- roo's when I would wander out into the cold, lonely street until the final alarm at 3 am).

Ah, what the heck. It's a blog post.