It's Been a Rough Day at the Martin House

It's been a rough morning. It started yesterday really... when the sewer backed up into the basement bathroom. Disgusting.
When Nate got home from work I asked him, "So...would you like to go for groceries or shop vac the basement?" He replied, "I can't believe you're giving me that option" I wasn't really.
I guess the shop vac had soot from cleaning the furnace last fall.  ... the soot got dumped in the trash can in the garage.  I'm guessing here but I think some of it did not make it into the garage trash can.

Back to the sewer problem... Nate rented a machine to try to fix the problem... it was not working... we had church at 7:30 and it was time to clean the kiddos up for that... but really... we could not put any water down any drains... so, I had the girls strip down to underwear and I was washing their hair in the back yard using the garden hose, when the neighbors caught me. I told the neighbors to just pretend they live in Arkansas. So we soon had quite a few neighbors out looking at the sewer caps in the yard.

We managed to get to church on time.  I opened the van door to get Stu out and saw that his feet were pitch black. I had no idea why. Wet ones to the rescue.

Church was great  Bill Coutain a friend from Grenada spoke to us about living 100% for God. 

This morning we had the plumber out to help us... He was so frustrated by the distance between the house and the hook up. We could not find any clean out valves. (something like that) My head wanted to explode from all of his questions. No Nate. My children were hanging on me and crying and getting in the plumbers way, begging for food, not combed, etc. Then the plumber guy started asking me to call different family members to ask them about clean out valves. "Are we sure this is your sewer hook up here by the road?" he asked. No I'm not sure, but the neighbors said it is. I called Nate, "are we sure it's ours?" No, we are not sure" Ok, so we were on the same page... It is stressful to answer these manly questions.  I went to knock on old Mr. Houer's door and he was not home. Guess where he was? Out by the road with the plumber.  He stood there with us for a while. The plumber was driving me nuts with all of his foreshadowing of doom. He was making me follow him all over the place, trying to educate me on the way things might go down. I was starting to realize I might not be flushing toilets for a few days if we had to dig up the whole system. They took some big machine thing into the basement to give it their best shot and Mr. Houer had a breakthrough. He remembered mowing over a vent cap up near by the house. And sure enough I thought the plumber was going to dance a jig.  He was just grinning and talking about a grease ball that he could see down in this trap. Things were looking up! Mr. Houer saved the day!

We were all (the plumber, his assistant, and I) feeling very sheepish about the sewer cap that was open down by Main Street. Beings that really did not have a thing to do with out house. 

So with our plumbing back in order... back to my housework I could go. Started the dishwasher, left the water down the wash tub. Started some wash. It was just about lunch time when Stuart boppers came in whining. He was covered in the same pitch black stuff as the night before. I stuck him in the laundry tub and headed to the garage looking for the problem. And there it was, the black furnace soot from the shop vac. Some on the floor. Lots in the garbage can. If I understand my dear children correctly, Stuart was tossing items that were not garbage into the can.... Lizzy was digging them out again. 

Still not dressed, hair not combed. 

At lunch I had to apologize to the children for loosing my cool with them.  I told them we could all go back to bed and when we wake up we could start over again! Mia responded, "Will we eat cereal for breakfast? and have the plumber come back?"