I Ain't Lye-ing (Again)

Here we have a picture of our clogged kitchen sinks. With the best of intentions, Lucie put a bunch of old food down the disposal. And it clogged up the plumbing. So we poured some Drano down. Then some Super Drano. Then some poisonous-to-even-think-about drain cleaner. Added a couple of pots of boiling water and stirred with a plunger until I had a nice broth of flesh eating acid (actually, the common ingredient to the drain cleaners is lye - which is a base). And there it sat. For two days. I would occasionally plunge but because of the dual sinks and vent, I had to block the other sink drain and seal off the vent while plunging. Not easy. That did nothing which meant my only option was to go in with the snake. The last time I did that, I wound up leaving a nice horseshoe shaped burn on my knee. I was kneeling in the drain cleaner and never felt it eating me up. So this time I donned gloves, overalls, raggedy shirt and safety glasses. 30 seconds in I realize the rubber gloves had a hole in the right hand because it is itching like a son of a gun. Went and washed the hand and tried another pair. I cut the bottom off of a milk jug and bailed out as much water from the sinks that I could (put it in a bucket and flushed it down the toilet). I went in under the sink and pulled out about 8,000 things we have under there and set them aside. Then I loosened the pipe connections under the sinks and caught that water in my bucket. Finally, I was able to get to the back square plug thing that gives straight access into the main plumbing line. And in goes the snake. Of course about 18 inches in there is a bend in the pipe so I had to fight my way through that but on I went. I thought the first bend might have been the clog so I pulled out the snake and tightened everything up. Ran some hot water and immediately I had a sink full of hot water again. Here we go again. Bail, drain, drain, unscrew, put in snake. This time I fed that thing all the way down. About 10 feet from the end of the snake I ran into some resistance. So I twirled the snake around and rammed it through a bunch of times. When I pulled it out, the "pig's tail" at the end was full of yuck so I knew I had been successful. Cleaned up my tools and ran upstairs to blog about it... ha ha. Lucie is down there re-organizing the under-sink stuff and cleaning it up.

Wednesday I went to work (at a trade show in Philly) while Lucie did errands and lacrosse practice with the kids. Yesterday I did a lot of yard work including poison-dusting some carpenter bee holes (pesky things!). Elliott had lacrosse practice at the high school so we took him there and then marched Mocha around downtown. She was loved by all! So many college kids stopped to pat her and give her ice and ask what kind of dog she was. She loved it. We made our way to Rita's Water Ice and bought her a water ice - us too! (We were giving her water all along). She loved the attention and was very obedient. Almost a bit overwhelming for a 5 month old baby though! Last night was my basketball night and it rained hard. So our high temperature yesterday of 82º has now dropped to 57º. But it is very nice out so we will go do something.