Wednesday, July 11, 2012

The one where a chupacabra ate my ceiling


On Saturday, the kids’ toilet was clogged.  I plunged.  Sloan plunged.  We poured a kettle’s worth of boiling water down it.  We snaked.  We wire coat hangered.  We (gasp) put on big gloves and inserted hands.  (Let us never speak of this again.)  All to no avail.  

On Sunday, we tried again.  And then Henry confessed that he had flushed a plastic Dixie cup down the toilet.  

Upon googling and facebooking about what we could to rectify the Great Dixie Cup Incident of 2012 (heretofore referred to as the DCI), knowing there was no way I was going to purchase large animal vet gloves or  do anything requiring pliers or actually lifting the toilet, I knew I was going to call the plumber on Monday morning.  

Oh, and did I mention that Sloan left for a business trip Sunday afternoon?  Yeah.  Awesome.

Oh, and did I also mention that Sunday night I saw a little black mouse dart across my family room floor while I was watching the Bachelorette’s hometown dates on Hulu?  Seeing as our last mouse was David Schwimmer, I decided to name this one Matt LeBlanc.  Except since he was black, I decided Matt LeNoir was more appropriate.  Sloan told me this was ridiculous and possibly racist.  I told him that when he was home he could name the mice whatever he damn well pleased, but since he was in Raleigh going to see Roger Waters with a client that he could just suck it.  The mouse is named Matt LeNoir.

Let it also be known that during this time I was finishing up Jenny Lawson’s memoir Let’s Pretend This Never Happened.  And in her book she has hundreds of scorpions in her wall and I think a demon goat.  So of course, I was pretty damn sure that our house was built on Native American burial grounds and our house was attacking us, avenging the long ago murder of a squirrel chieftain.  Every noise I heard, I was certain it was a chupacabra.  Yes, yes, I didn’t even know what a chupacabra was until I read this (because I’m not insane from Texas).

This did not help me sleep Sunday night.  

Monday morning, I was fearful of running into a goat sucker in the kitchen but was met with something actually more frightening, a wet floor and a sagging ceiling.  

It was unavoidable; I was going to have to call the plumber.  And the exterminator.


The plumber came quickly and fixed the toilet (in ten minutes) and replaced about ten things in our toilet.  I didn’t even know our toilet had ten things in it, and that’s counting the stupid Dixie cup (which has yet to be located, by the way).  He also drained the ceiling.  (Since the Tupperware cereal container I had placed under the drip was now full.  FULL.)


Monday afternoon, the handyman came to look at the ceiling and we made plans for him to come this afternoon.  Monday evening, however, when I went to straighten up the kids’ bathroom, I discovered a huge puddle of standing water in the base of the kids’ vanity.  You know where I usually store all the toilet paper and paper towels I buy at Costco?  Throwing away 24 rolls of waterlogged toilet paper and five rolls of paper towels was beyond gross.

I sent this picture to my handyman who is also a plumber.


And when he came to set to work on the ceiling this afternoon, it was discovered that it was not dry yet.  In fact, as he set to pull some of it down, it sagged off and even more water rolled out into our kitchen floor.  



So now the hole looks like this.  



Awesome.  That smaller hole in the back?  That's where our pot holder chandelier used to hang.  And to answer your next question, yes.  We did go out for pizza for dinner.  It was $7 pizza night at Angelo’s. 

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