Like a Beach Vacation in My Bathroom

I had planned to write something about my adventures exploring the wreckage of my family's old business this week, with the welcome assistance of Butterfly Woman. Was going to call it Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Ruined Factory or something equally enticing. It was pretty damn cool, kind of like an archaeology dig and a post-apocalyptic movie set all rolled into one... But then my plumbing backed up this morning. (Technically, it also backed up Thursday night, but I thought that was a freak accident.) This sent me into a spiral of un-Nancy-like grouchiness. The pipes from my house to the septic tank have a very shallow grade, meaning that gravity isn't working for me as it should, and the pipes are prone to blockage. I'm careful about what I put down them because of this, but apparently we've reached that point again where running the dishwasher or the washing machine causes water to pour from all orifaces of the downstairs bathroom, specifically the tub drain and the toilet. The downstairs bathroom is pretty horrible to begin with, and the occasional floodings haven't helped it. I kept the catbox in the tub down there for a while, since I wasn't using it as a bathtub, and it nicely contained any spilled kitty litter and the occasional cat accident. I moved the catbox a while ago, but there's still a lot of residual cat sand and clay dust in the room. Combine that with a few gallons of water bursting up through the pipes, and voila! It's just like Maui, only with ugly linoleum peeling up at the corners.

So I've had it with the occasional floods. I ripped up the linoleum tonight, I ripped the wallpaper off the walls and the crappy fake woodwork trim off the baseboard. Tomorrow I'm cutting out the carpet in the hallway outside, which is soaked beyond reclaimation. After school finishes up next week, I'm going carpet shopping. Meanwhile, the plumber comes on Tuesday. Nancy Drew will have to wait.