Golgotha Arrise!
Monday, December 14th, 2009Explination of the crap pond mentioned in “Spin Grandma”.
So the day before thanksgiving arrives and I have house guests. Mom and Bob are in from down south, and Jen is staying with me because the guy she’s subletting from is back for the holiday.
This is fine, I have the space, but what I don’t realize is that my plumbing cannot take the strain. For the past couple weeks, I have noticed that when someone takes a “longer shower”* that a shower smelling pond builds up in my garage. This is not a big deal, but I’m worried because it doesn’t bode well for the future since it means my sewer line is not draining properly.
On the day before thanksgiving, this comes to a head. The pond is back and it’s not just shower residue…there’s um…”sewage” floating in my garage. Yes, friends ans neighbors- I had a growing crap pond in my garage on the day before people would be coming over to eat things and presumably… excrete them.
Suddenly, the “well I should probably do something about this” became a mandate.
so we :
1.) snaked the drains (disgusting but no result)
2.) Called the landlord, which then led to:
3.) tore up the deck because he *swore* there was a bigger plumbing intake down there and I had just covered it up
4.) Stood around staring at the crap pond
5.) tried snaking the drains from the other side which led to:
6.) some random woman saying “The city should be able to snake it from the street for you”
7.) called the city and then
8.) waited
9.) and waited
10.) Finally the city guy shows up at around 9pm and he snakes the city side and there’s no subsidence in the crap pond. Then he says “Flush a toilet” and I say “No, because it’s just gonna fill the crap pond some more”.
11.) Finally after some pleading and cajoling the city guy agrees to put his flush hose into my garage drain. First I cram it in and try to get it to move… it doesn’t. Then the city guy helps out. He wangles the thing for about 5 min and finally with a geyser, which we watched from the street, the crap shoot in the city main drain flows free and
12.) The crap pond drains away. The final draining of the crap pond leads to
13.) I hose all the crap into the drain and then liberally spread Clorox all over my garage floor, for which I ruin a par of brown cords (bleach stains) but now my drain flow through and everything is great
It took like 12 hours, and 7 people and 14 “street consultants”**, but the disaster was averted and the pond was vanquished!
Thanksgiving went off without a hitch but the thing I was most thankful for was family or friends or yummy food… it was that there wasn’t a lake of human poo in my garage.
amen.
* Read: more than 5 mins
** Comments like “wow you got a real mess on your hands”
*** BTW the title is a reference to the crap demon from Dogma, in case you don’t remember here’s the screenplay… just search for Golgatha if you want to read the appropriate scene.