Full Service Mama

Even though I only worked two days this past week, Friday night found me tired and ready to tuck into bed by 10 pm.  JT, who is either hardier than me or has the judgment of a 12 year old (or both), wanted to stay up to watch the second half of the Texas A&M-Oklahoma bowl game.  I gave him the thumb's up on this important task and he headed up to the playroom.  I set to snoring.

By the time he came downstairs to go to bed, I was asleep.  I woke up enough to dimly register that the toilet made an odd sound when JT flushed it.  Then I rolled over and fell back asleep.  At 4 am, I had to use that toilet and only after I flushed it did I remember the sound, which I was now hearing for a second time.   

Uh-oh.  

I turned on the light and grabbed my glasses, prepared to shut off the water.  But the toilet didn't quite overflow, though it was clearly clogged.

Awesome.

Some people would leave such a problem to be solved in the daylight.  I am not some people. So I set out to solve the clog.  Step one involved diagnosing the extent of the problem.  I have a two-story home with a single soil pipe running out of the basement, so it was entirely possible that I had not one, but two clogged toilets, or, more accurately a clogged drain.  I headed to the downstairs toilet to see if it could be flushed.  It could, which led me to conclude that my problem was with the soil pipe between the first and second floor.  I made the trip to the basement to get the plunger and headed back up two flights of stairs, now accompanied by the cats, who like to supervise my work.  Three plunges later, my problem was solved.  As my plumber has taught me, I flushed the toilet several more times, to be sure the clog was truly removed.

Then the cats and I returned to bed, confident that we had earned the right to sleep in this morning.