Crack Kills

Ten days ago I asked our landlord to send the handyman by to snake our sink and tub drains for like the third time in eight months. Since we moved here I've used like 10 gallons of Drano to get whatever it is outta there, and it hasn't seemed to work. (Don't worry, it can't be bad to use that much Drano because it all flows into the Potomac River which is lifeless and contaminated anyway... Well, except for maybe the mutated asexual fish they discovered living in there a couple of months ago...)

Anyway, it has taken this long for Randy (our plumber/handyman/landlord's crazy brother/ talk about job security) to finally get back to me. He told me that he'd come by the next day at 10am and he would call before he came. Tick-tock tick-tock. Ten o'clock came and went and no Randy, no call. For those of you who know me, this is intolerable behavior. I have two HUGE pet peeves... one is when a CD skips and the other is when somebody doesn't do what they say they will. After I finally got a hold of him, he came by around 3:30pm. He pulled his van up on our front lawn and parked diagonally like he was from the dukes of hazzard. Here we go again...

Seriously, Randy is the epitome of a plumber. Old jeans and t-shirt, beer belly, monk hair cut, and more crack than the Grand Canyon. Not sure why he bothered wearing a belt. As he was snaking our sink drain, he started talking about whatever and never stopped. Have you ever talked politics with a plumber? A very, very interesting experience.

Snaking the drain wasn't working, so he went out to his van and brought back a big box with somekind of air compressor in it. So he pumped up the pressure, and shot it like a gun down the drain. Water sprayed everywhere. It didn't work. In fact it made it worse. Now the sink wasn't draining at all. He proceeded to share with me how he had pulled all sorts of things from clogged pipes in the past, including underwear and cell phones from 20 feet down. Sounded like a plumber's fish story to me.

He went for another go with the compressor. He turned on the water and it seemed to be draining just fine.... only problem was, as he was admiring his work, there appeared to be a growing puddle of water on our beautiful pink tiled floor. "Oops... sorry about that... I hate success when it's unsuccessful." Those were the exact words from his mouth. What the heck does that mean, anyway? Apparently he blew so much air down there that it blew one of the joint pipes beneath the sink right off.

So then he went back to his van and wheeled in a motorized snake. I was just shaking my head wondering why I didn't just try a few more gallons of Drano. After one hour of crack, floods, and contraptions, he finally got it to drain correctly.

Fortunately the shower drain didn't take quite so long. But, did you know that the our drinking water here in Virginia comes from the Potomac? Plumbers are just encyclopedias of information.....