Let’s face it, the number one thing buyers want in a house is plumbing. Trust me, if you market a property with marble everywhere and solid gold door knobs, and the plumbing doesn’t work, forget it. All the “Yea butts” hold little persuasive value. If the seat for the throne is diamond studded platinum, and the ‘water in – water out’ won’t work, all you have is a cold bottom. And some dimples if the diamonds are in the wrong place.
Anyway, I’m fairly handy at doing my own plumbing, but when the job gets ‘complicated’ I call in the pros. I own a plunger and a monkey wrench, and when the plunger doesn’t fix it, and I have to use the monkey wrench…well, that a good time to make that call. To be honest, I’m not sure which plumbing part is the monkey, so I don’t exactly know how to use the wrench properly to fix that darn thing. That wrench works good when putting together or taking apart a pipe joint though, I just hate to misuse tools unless I absolutely have to.
Anyway, I recently had a situation where my drains didn’t, but the rest of the plumbing worked fine. This can be somewhat distracting at an Open House. Here’s a little tip from ol’ Cletus, keep the Beenie Babies out of the bathroom. No, not yours, the ones the kids bring along that should’ve been left in the car. They’re not exactly biodegradable if you get my drift. And how two kids can fight over one of ‘em and decide drowning is better than sharing is a question for the ages.
Anyway, a quick call to “Scooter the Rooter” (.com) should have solved the problem. He said all he had to do was run a ‘snake’ through the system and that would fix it. But after about 10 minutes he came out to announce he broke the snake off somewhere in the pipe and he would have to go get another one. Great, first my drains come down with Beenie Baby blockage, and now a serious case of reptile dysfunction, as well. Apparently, those little critters can do more damage to your drains than government cheese.
Anyway, it seems you can’t just snake out another snake. Who’d of thunk. Maybe the plumber should have used a mongoose at this point. After all, if they have wrenches for monkeys the least they should have is something to get that snake out of the drain. As it turns out they do. To make a long story short, after the backhoe left, and the new drain pipe was installed, all I had to do was have the sod replaced in the front yard. I always wondered how those Beenie Baby things could be so expensive. Now I know.
Anyway, my worst nightmare is if I find out that furry little doll was a monkey…and I already had the wrench. I don’t think I could yell at myself loud enough to hear it over all the screaming.
