It's Time.

Each year as spring arrives, I watch the buds on the trees burst to life and I realize how in order for those buds to grow, the roots of the trees must have a whole lot of water in them. If the roots of the trees are holding a lot of water, the roots are swelling. When the roots swell, all my hopes and dreams back up in the laundry tub and it smells a lot like raw sewage.

Two weeks ago there was a plumbing fiasco across the street and I watched with anxiety and heartburn because every year I watch the plumbing trucks make their way around our neighborhood. Snaking drains, or worse, digging long and expensive trenches so that root filled pipes can be replaced.

I knew I shouldn't have mentioned our hopes and plans for the bathroom because it is against the laws of humanity to let me have money in the bank. Money in the bank = everything breaks, including the cat who has pooped around the house one time too many and is going to the vet. I just can't wait to see how much that costs us.

The poop is costing us a new rug as well because yesterday when I walked into the dining room and found another present marked:

To: You
From: Gary

I started to clean it up and then, in a moment of sheer fury I decided it was worth another cheap Ikea rug in order to not clean up crap on the old one. It was incredibly liberating, rolling up the old rug, poop and all, and just throwing it in the garbage can. No scooping, no gagging, no soaking in vinegar and lemon, no constantly wondering if I'm smelling poop and didn't get it all. Be gone foul rug.

(Two Suggestions I've Gotten For The Cat:
1) Put a bag on it's behind, like a diaper. This won't work, but perhaps a bag on it's face would.
2) "Accidentally" leave the door open. I would do that but he would never, ever leave. He'd just lay right outside the backdoor and I'd have to convince the kids, 'Oh no, that's not Gary, it's a stray. A stray who's a huge and lazy as Gary and is trying to get in the house....don't let it in.')

I knew the plumbing was coming, it's been looming in my mind since last year. I've been watching the trucks moving down the street, coming toward me. When the trucks were across the street for two entire days, 2-3 trucks at a time, I knew my number was up.

But we'd just caught our breath and were living within our budget and things were coming together and boom! Even better? We don't even have enough in the bank to take care of all the things going wrong so we remain behind! It's a way of life really. A wonderful way of life.

I'll give you that things are still far better than they were last year, nonetheless, I'd really like to catch my fucking breath without the pipes spewing shit at me. Literally.

Pray for us. They come with a camera tomorrow. The best case scenario is a $2000 repair. The worst case is a $10,000 one. And the even worse worst case scenario? We have no line at all to the sewer and this entire house has been rigged up like the bathroom. This is not an unlikely scenario according to the last plumbers who were here for 4.5 hours and who couldn't figure out why we have no drainage in the basement floor.

They spent a couple of hours trying to snake through our bizarre main drain and then walking around the house shaking their heads wondering where the hell the line leads. It's, in a word, totally fucking great.

Also, Logan leaves town on Sunday for a week and I'm all out of man saving panties.

Comments

[Dorkette]

Another reason to stay in Michigan?

Damn, my heart goes out to you.... have a few beers this weekend, and hopefully the stench of shit will be dulled...

[Theresa]

I feel your pain, Melissa. We had to have our yard dug up and the sewer pipe replaced last fall. Wiped us out financially but it is better than having sewage backing up in our basement. Sometimes I really miss living in an apartment.

[Star Shine]

Hang in there, sister! That's a bummer. At least when the smell of doody gets to be too much for you, you can go outside to smell the tree blossoms. Yeah, that glass is half full, right? Have a nice weekend!

[jbeeky]

It may be cheaper for all of you to get catheders inserted. Or install those incinerator toilets advertised in the back of my Organic Living Magazine. My Mom was very pragmatic about animals and felt that we had enough money to offer them a quality life, i.e. cat food and pillow, but not quantity, meaning if you were genetically unfortunate enough to get sick you should hurry up and die so we could get another cat. Heartwarming, eh?
One more dorky question, is there a chance you have homeowners insurance and its covered? I am sure you would have done this if it was possible but I just had to ask. Sorry.

[mrs.cpa]

We have the same problem at our house and since our house is built on a hill held up by retaining wall (that also needs to be replaced)the repair cost is $25,000 - which will never be recovered when the house is sold of course. My husband says he will NEVER buy a house again without a plumber coming out.

After the camera, the plumbers said that a lot of our terra cotta pipe is missing, so we try not to walk heavily over the sewer pipe area for fear of something colapsing.

My husband has a hand snake and we have gone so far as to rent a tree root cutting snake/bit ourselves, so we don't have to pay the plumbers every time the cleanout valve overflows into the yard (it would be in our bathtub if we didn't leave the cap loose outside.)

I know exactly what that sinking feeling feels like when you realize that the sewer is backed up and that your insurance doesn't cover anything. I'm hoping that one day, the tree that is the problem will finally split down the middle during a storm and crash throuh the retaining wall and then it will all have to be replaced and our insurance WILL cover it.

[dutch]

Some sublet cats I was taking care of once used to shit just to spite me, but they'd hide it. One time they shat UNDER the bathroom rug, and my friend who was staying with me in the sublet stepped on it when he got out of the shower. for the next three days I thought my friend was having scat orgies after I went to sleep because the entire apartment was starting to smell like shit. then I traced the shit to its source under the bathroom rug, where it had become a shit pancake. I was only subletting the place for a few more days, and the subletter hadn't told me about his shitty cats, so I took a spatula from his drawer, used it to transfer the shit pancake to the trash, then promptly put the shit spatula in the sink, where it remained unwashed after I left. it's one of the shittiest things I've ever done.

that said, subletting looks good compared to home ownership. I'll take shitty cats and spatulae over shitty cats and a shit stew building under the house that I have to pay to clean up.

[MsShad]

Vinegar actually does something chemically to keep them coming back to the same spot. Doesn't nuetralize it at all, which I had been led to believe too.

[Nefariousnina]

I love you Melissa. I really do. Not in a strange kind of "ewww" way, but in a way like "I wish like hell I had the resources to help." Which I don't. And never had, either. Your trials and tribulations so mirror my own that I don't feel so alone. If I ever win the lottery, you are definitely on my list of "people I'll anonymously send money to just to blow their minds." Wishing you the best...

[Peggasus]

Damn, that sucks. I'm sorry. Drainage tile and such work is always expensive, and it's not like you can even see the benefits from it, like when you've got to put on a new roof. Or add insulation. We've had to do it too.

And that money in the bank thing? I hear you. Years ago we used to get a dividend check twice a year for something, and every time after we got it, something would happen to one of the cars that required almost the exact amount of that check. EVERY SINGLE TIME. It got so that when we got the check we would just wait for something to go wrong with a car. It always did.

[Allison]

I hated moving from Royal Oak. The ONLY thing that I didn't miss was having to call RotoRooter and have them spend 1 hour in my basement digging out roots (every 6 months) and other not so nice things. I was always so afraid that one day, I'd have the "worst case scenario". My sympathies are with you.

[Missy]

Oh God. I'm so sorry to hear of your plumbing woes. That totally stinks (pun intended).

As for the cat, I share your pain. We have two, the big fat one and the petite friendly little one. The big fat one has no love for any of us and enjoys pooping on stuff to piss us off.

Good luck!

[veg4me]

Let's hope they trace the problem back to the root of all evil.

The golf wallpaper.

When my son was 18 months old our house in San Diego had the same problem. We had only lived in the house for 2 weeks. My husband was in Egypt. I came downstairs in the morning to find our 2 dogs standing ankle deep in sludge.

The plumber's teeny tiny camera could barely make it through the piping.

He finally told me it was root damaged and that I should stop flushing my tampons down the toilet as it only made the problem worse.

And then I spoke the words that I thought I would never have to say to someone "Those are not my tampons".

We had only been in the house for 14 days and I hadn't had my period.

He looked at me incredulously.

"Whose are they then? Your husband's?"

[marian]

I'm sorry, that was hilarious. We had the big flooded basement and tampax lecture when we first bought our house. God that was disgusting. Every year I hope and pray that this won't be the year we have to dig the big one.

Anyway, 'perhaps a bag on its face would.' ha!

have you noticed that this is unexpected environmental poop findings day on the internet?

[Melissa Summers]

I got the "Tampon Lecture" too! About 7 years ago. I heard the plumber start to say it, "You might want to tell your wife not to flush her...you know...."

And I didn't hear the rest because I ran and hid in my closet refusing to face the plumber from that point on.

[Sumo]

Man, that sucks!

Don't know if it helps any, but you're not alone:
href="http://blogs.iberkshires.com/BreedEmAndWeep/archives/195"

[Jaycee]

veg4me, that was too funny! I followed that no-flushing tampons rule for years (hubby's edict), but, you know, sometimes you just gotta! (Gross, I know) Also, Melissa, who in the world did you guys buy that house from? They owe you, big-time!

[anastasia beaverhausen]

Gary...the cat. Hilarious. But not the part about shitting on the rug. Bad Gary! Bad!

[Deb]

Melissa, it's like we are living in paralell universes.

http://earthmamagoddess.blogspot.com/2006/03/500-cat.html#links

We keep getting a computer virus and have reformatted our harddrive 5 times in the last two days.

Our one and only car broke down AGAIN and cost $500 to fix. It is a saturn stationwagon from 1993, I am not sure it is even worth $500 total.

I am praying the rent check doesn't bounce before the payment to the garage goes thru or vice versa.

It seems just when we get ahead something comes along and completely fucks it up and I cannot figure out WHY ME...or WHY YOU

Please PLEASE share if you happen to figure it out before me???

[Alana]

Hello,

That really stinks (literally) about your pipe troubles. We would be totally screwed if something like that ever happened to us, since we have no money in savings. What gets us every year is our 2000 Jetta that figures out that we got a tax refund, and conveniently breaks immediately, costing us the amount of our refund. This year, we got the refund last week, and started dreaming about using it to have the inside of our house painted. On Friday, my husband took the car to have it inspected, and it failed, due to emissions. It went to the dealer yesterday, and needed new spark plug wires, a tune-up and something else. Now, we have about $70 left from our refund. Maybe we'll be able to buy the paint, but not pay someone to put it on the wall.

Oh, and MY cat? He just pukes all the time, and never on any of the hard floors. We bought new carpet two years ago, and tried to match it to the color of cat puke, but his new food is a different color, and not as good of a match. I think I'd almost rather he shit instead, because it would be easier to clean up.

[Julie]

My plumber always leaves a paragraph of graphic explanation on his bill. Which certainly precludes any second-guessing on worth of service.

Imagine my delight when I scanned the bill, to read that services rendered included displacement of "Tree Roots and Tampons".

Then-husband then appropriated the phrase as new alternate lyrics for "Polka Dots and Moonbeams":

And I'll always see
tree roots and tampons
when I kiss the pug-nosed dream

PD and Moonbeams actually pops up quasi-frequently in airport musak, so please: hum along!

[AmyinMotown]

That SUCKS. Similar thing happened to us about amonth ago--we just annually have to have the drain snaked out, and hadn't, and our nice reasonably priced plumber waited a day and a half to tell me his sewer guy left own and he couldn't help me after all. I was thinking how nice it was that Paul had his new job and we were starting to get caught up with the bills. Ahhh, the universe laughs...

As do I, at many of your commenter's stories, and I actually came back here to read what you said about the cat. And I am even a cat person!

[Susan]

We had sewer issues in a house we rented in graduate school. And the plumber told the landlord--who announced it ON OUR FRONT PORCH for all to hear--that the problem was that someone had flushed a "rubber." And I said, "A what? Do you mean a CONDOM?" which sent our crazy born-again landlord into a seizure, because apparently I wasn't supposed to talk about sex or any of it's accompanying parts. But really, who says "rubber" any more?

But the funny part was this: we were ACTIVELY trying to get pregnant at the time, so no birth control of any type was being used in our house! Which meant that the "rubber" in question belonged to . . . ick.

I couldn't wait to move out of that house.

[Velma]

Boy, what great timing! Today is the one year anniversary of our closing on our brand new house...and guess who came to visit us this morning? Tom, the plumber! Is this like a full moon thing where plumbing problems run rampant? Have the stars aligned or something?

[IzzyMom]

Normally, when I'm this late for the party I don't bother commenting but this made me laugh and cringe all at the same time:

"...no constantly wondering if I'm smelling poop and didn't get it all. Be gone foul rug"

I've so been there. I know all about questioning if your nose is working properly or if you're having smell-hallucinations — and it's always in conjunction with a sick cat. The dog would just get sick and crap in plain sight which, while gross, was far preferable to playing "find the poop if, in fact, there is any and it's not just a residual poop smell wafting out of the rug"

(We replaced all rugs after the geriatric cats and dog went to pet heaven)

Sorry about the plumbing issues. We have a similar thing with termites. We're not sure and we're too afraid to find out.