A Toilet Story

February 3rd, 2010

Let me first set the scene....

I get home from work about 8 o'clock. I have one of those headaches that make you cross eyed. Light of any kind brings excruciating pain and the only way that you think it will go away is to sleep it off and hope that it went away over night. I immediately retire to the back sofa and plan to call it a night...... I'll pick up from here in a moment.

Most of you may know that we have a finiky toilet. It's very susceptible to clogs and we (sorry, I) have to plunge it about once or twice a month. Now, me being the one who unclogs the toilet every time, I'm very careful about what goes into the toilet and how much I flush the toilet. Apparently, (and as you'll soon know to be very true) Christie does not use this same caution with our finiky toilet.

So back to me being half dead on the back sofa trying to call it a night. I hear Christie go in to use the toilet. This immediately wakes me from my coma as I always pay close attention to what she's doing behind that closed door; because at any moment Christie could come running out of the bathroom with hands in the air screaming that the toilet is overflowing and that I need to go stop it. Now, I've explained to Christie several times that if this happens there's a water shutoff valve behind the toilet and that she can turn this off and the water wont raise anymore. I've explained to her that this shutoff valve works much like the hot/cold water valve on the sink or shower. Still any hint of an overflow and here comes Christie, hands in the air and screaming "overflow, overflow". Gotta Love her!! So, as I was saying, Christie finishes up in the bathroom and out she comes. I didn't hear the gurgle from the toilet so I yelled out that the toilet might be overflowing. I hear running footsteps into the bathroom and then I hear her say "Nope, everything is fine". (Now remember this comment. It will prove priceless here in a moment.) So, I doze off back to sleep until I wake up and feel the need to use the facility myself. I do my business (#1 BTW, I don't want anyone to be able to blame me for any of this) and go to flush and wah lah, we have a clog. I bend down to use the shutoff valve and pain shoots down my back as we all know bending over is painful with a horrible headache. As much as I didn't feel like it last night I went out to get my trusty plunger and went back in to do my perfected Allen House Toilet Plunge. Now, remember what Christie said; "Nope, everythings fine". I can unclog our toilet in less than 8 plunges and 10 seconds now so I know it's 30 - 45 seconds before I'm back on the couch so I get to work, except this time, it doesn't work. I'm really aggravated now as my perfect plunge record is now in jeopardy and I feel like crap but oh well I have to get it done. I start plunging this toilet like a mad man. I'm going at it so bad that it makes P90X look like a walk in the park. Keep in mind, every stroke of my trusty plunger is sending a shock wave to the precise area of my head that I wish that I could permanently remove. After literally 30 minutes of plunging I go to plan B, the internet!

After reading all about toilets and clogs I did get some sense of comfort in knowing that I wasn't alone on this thing and many other people have experienced this same thing before. I decided to try the first piece of advice. Use a wire coat hanger to dislodge the clog by sticking it up the toilet hole. By the way, this is the single dumbest thing to try as the coat hanger bends and jostles all over the place and doesn't get very far up the drain anyway, STUPID!

Plan C was a toilet snake, which I now know is actually a drain snake. I purchased one of these before and it didn't work very well but I decided to try it again anyway. This thing is about 10 foot long, cumbersome and a total waste of time. It doesn't go where it's suppose to go and the other 9 feet of it is slapping all around the bath tub and who knows where else. Yes, I still have an excruciating headache that has now been worsened by the aggravation and physical effort that I've put into all of this. So, after the snake thing went terribly wrong I'm on to Plan D.

Plan D is a combination of laundry soap, dish soap and hot water. Yes, according to Google this is a very viable way to unclog your toilet. For the next hour I proceeded to dump 30 gallons of hot water and half a gallon of laundry detergent down that damn toilet and still nothing. Remember Christie saying "Nope, everything is fine".

At this point it's about 10:30 and this toilet has got about two and a half hours of my life that I'll never get back. At this point Christie is turning yellow as she's probably had to pee since about 9 o'clock or so. She finally asks, "Should you call my Dad?"? Well as we all know in the Allen household trying to live up to WWSD (what would Sam do) is very challenging at times. I respond back to her with "Nope, everything is fine" : ) But, honestly it's looking like this toilet may get the best of me so I call a plumber. I was told the charge would be somewhere between $150-$300 to come out in the middle of the night. That wasn't happening so back to the internet I go.

Plan E happened to be something called a toilet auger. I watched several Youtube videos on how this amazing contraption worked so quick and easy and how everyone should have one because it would save you a ton of money for a plumber in the middle of the night and your father in law would never have to come bail you out of a jam if you had one of these things. SWEET, I'm getting one, right away. Whoops, Home Depot and Lowes are closed. The guys at Wal Mart barely knew that they had a plumbing department so it looked like i was SOL.

Plan F is to wake up at 5:45 this morning and go get one of these $50 toilet augers for myself. (I'm sure Sam has 1 or probably 3 of them but it was much better this way). In the meantime Me, Christie and Emily all go out to use the restroom in the backyard before bed together. Christie for some reason feels the need to hose off in the shower now for some strange reason. For as much as I could see looked like she performed quite well in the back yard??

So, 5:45 is here and off to HD I go. I walk right in and BAM there's my saving grace. My very own $50 industrial toilet auger. I'm back at home by 6:10 with this thing in the toilet and about 9 seconds after that EUREKA I can feel that I've got a hold of something..... what could it be? I actually pause for a few seconds and try to guess. A few things ran through my head but none of them were what I was about to pull out of this toilet. I back down the toilet auger and out comes a...............................

SOCK!?!?!? Really, a Team in Training female running sock was in my toilet? I sat and pondered, how long was this in there and how did it get in there? I woke up the wife and she came in and did what Christie always does.... begin to laugh hysterically. "Oh, haha, I must have dropped that in the toilet last night before I got in the shower." Really Christie? How in the heck did you manage to flush that thing down the toilet without knowing it. "Oh, hahaa, I have no idea that's crazy" I have no idea either.

So, what did we learn?

1st. Almost anything can be flushed down a toilet. Even a sock!?!?!?
2nd. A toilet auger will save you money for a plumber and a trip from the father in law.
3rd. This stuff always happens to me.


Enjoy!!