I love plumbers!!!

You never really realize how much you appreciate some things until you can't have them anymore. Take doing laundry, doing dishes, flushing toilets, taking (ahem, anou, if you're reading this, having) showers... It's amazing how out of whack your world becomes when you can't do these things in your own home. Our sewer started backing up this weekend through a drain pipe in the floor of our furnace room. It started when I was doing laundry and water started gushing out from underneath the furnace room door during the rinse/spin cycle. Yikes! So we cleaned up after that and the water level went back down pretty well. Enough that we were able to use the shower and toilets until Sunday night when using those made things back up as well. This time, not gushing clean washer water either... So yeah... not fun. The water level went down enough that we didn't have standing water on the floor but the floor pipe was pretty darn full - ready to overflow at any moment. Since we're in a town house people around us have some effect on it as well so we were just praying no one was flushing huge amounts of water. And I went to Kroger to use the restroom Sunday night. I love stores that are open 24 hours!

I was able to get ready for work really quick this morning with no shower... and then I fretted all day about how I might come home to a flooded house. I kept praying that the water wouldn't overflow to the living room where there is carpet (oh yeah, and electrical stuff...). We wanted to wait to call a plumber til Monday when they wouldn't have weekend or evening surcharges. I also wanted to talk to our construction company just in case it was a bigger problem (since something similar had happened once before about a year and a half ago). They finally got back to me only to say I'd have to figure out the problem first and then they might reimburse me if it was a bigger issue. I kind of figured. Since I work at the physical plant I also wanted to check with the plumbing shop to see if any of the guys there who do work on the side would be available after work since by this time no regular plumber could get to our place until the afternoon anyway. But alas, none of them were available - which would have been WAY cheaper. However, you get to a point where you're desperate enough just to have the problem fixed and you're willing to pay just about anything to get your life back to normal.

So we got a regular plumbing company to get a guy to run the snake through our building's water main. I found out at least one of our neighbors was starting to experience some slow moving drainage as well - although not any overflowing floor pipes that they knew of. After some heavy duty plunging inside the house as well, the plumber guy was finally able to get the clog busted and our sewer system was relieved - and so were we. Plumbers are my new best friends. Ahh, all is well with our corner of the world once again. I also realize how things could be worse. My house could be under 10 feet of water in Louisiana. Guess I'll take a backed up sewer instead and count my blessings. Although I'm still praying we don't have any flooding here since we're likely to see the leftovers of Hurricane Katrina up our direction tonight and tomorrow. And I'll definitely not forget to pray for those cleaning up after the storm that has passed down south - it would be so devastating. I had only a small picture of what it must be like and even then I was pretty stressed - home ownership has it's benefits AND it's headaches. But I'm pretty sure it's worth it - I think.