Wrath of the Old House Plumbing Gods

We seem to have a recurring theme going at our house...plumbing problems.  It had already been too much day.  Lots of bickering and squabbling to the point where I felt like I was absolutely going to lose it.  I decided to gently persuade the kids to play upstairs in the play room for a while.  Yeah.  That's it.  Gentle persuasion.  So there I was, having a peaceful period of time by myself downstairs when it got to be too peaceful, if you know what I mean.  Like in the wild west when it was quiet...too quiet.  Something was amiss.

Sure enough, the piercing shriek came.  "MY WET!  MY WEEEEEEEET!!!!"  I ran up there thinking that Lawrence had been too busy playing to stop and go to the bathroom.  Boy was I in for a treat.  Yes, he was wet.  He was wet *all over*.  I began taking his clothes off to send down the laundry chute, when I heard a sound.  A trickling water kind of sound.  The bathroom was flooding!  Happy Day.

I couldn't get quite the whole story, but Lawrence admitted that he needed to wash his hands and put water in the sink.  I tried to find out if he put a toy or something down the drain, but he only talked some gibberish and gestured to 'the dark hole' in the sink.  

Yes, that is a yellow policeman duckie floating in the sink.  

I called Phillip at work and told him to bring home a bottle of drain cleaner.  Meanwhile after the a few hours, the water eventually went down.  I took apart the plumbing underneath the sink to see if perhaps a missing toy might be in there.  There was a bit of sink gunk, but no blockage that I could see.  I washed everything and put the plumbing pipes back together and gave it a whirl.  Still plugged.  Crap.

Phillip came home with the drain cleaner.  Drain cleaner indeed.  I'm used to working with the lye-based stuff.  Pour a little in, a couple of hours later, flush it with cold water.  Done.  He couldn't find the regular stuff, so he brought home this sulfuric acid stuff.

Saturday night, when I was about to get Lydia down for bed, I thought I'd pour down the drain cleaner, get her to sleep, then do the flushing with cold water.  I took a gander at the bottle.  Skull and crossbones everywhere.  I was reading the directions and it was just shy of saying you needed to be in radiation suits to use the stuff.  

Phillip had me get some safety glasses and gloves from the basement before I started.  He told me I ought to get long sleeves and pants on too, but I was just ready to get the stuff in there and be done with it.  So I poured it down the drain.  Immediately, an evil sounding hissing began, and smoke started coming out of the drain.  Yikes!  I quickly slammed the cup over the drain (per the directions, the drain hole should be covered) and got the hell outta there.  It smelled like rotten eggs.  I don't know why, because I don't recall putting rotten eggs down the drain.  

Fifteen minutes later, I went back in there to see how things were going.  I took the cup off of the drain.  A little sludge-y but nothing to write home about.  I poured in about 8 ounces of water to get the flushing started.  Holy Eruption, Batman!  All of a sudden this black sludge started bubbling up and hissing some more.  It was getting bigger and bigger.  I was afraid to put more water in it.  And the smell.  It was horrible.  The whole upstairs began to stink like rotten eggs.  

Finally the bubbling leveled off and we put in more water.  But the water wasn't flowing through.  I looked underneath the sink and noticed a small trickle leaking from the pipe joints.  So of course, I reached in and tried to tighten the connection to stop the leak.  Big, huge mistake.  The pipe came off in my hand and black sludge-y acid came shooting from the pipe all over my legs and onto the floor.  It just kept coming!  

I yelled, "It's getting on me!  It's getting on me!" to which Phillip came running in there.  I got in the tub and started soaping and rinsing my legs like crazy.  He ran downstairs for the baking soda to neutralize the acid which was continuing to shoot out all over the floor.  I guess it's good to have a person trained in chemicals around for times like these.  I just would've gotten a ton of chemical burns trying to clean up that mess!  Anyhoo, after three entire boxes of baking soda used, lots of mopping, rinsing and mopping again, we now have an acid-cleaned bathroom floor.  We finally finished up around 1am.  Lawrence had fallen asleep while playing with his head under the covers and Lydia was still chirping and tossing stuffed animals happily from her bed.  I have no idea what went on with them, as we were 100 percent focused on black sludge all evening.  Archie was given the direction to keep them in their room and that's what he did.  

While the whole house stunk like rotten eggs for a couple of days, we must've somehow appeased the Old House Plumbing Gods.  On the up side, our water is now free flowing, baby!  Free flowing!

Surprise! The Hot Rod Power Tour 2011

As kind of an afterthought during Phillip's vacation, he decided he'd like to catch the Hot Rod Power Tour on it's stop in Indianapolis.  The Hot Rod Power Tour is a week-long road in which people with interesting cars caravan from town to town.  We're pretty close to Indianapolis, so it wasn't really too much of a stretch for us to check it out.  We left the campground mid-morning on Wednesday, arrived at home to drop off the camper, and left for Indianapolis a few hours and showers later.

Phillip and Archie did the whole Hot Rod Power Tour last year from Illinois all the way to Mobile, AL.  This year, the tour left from Florida and went all the way to Detroit.  You can read about Phillip and Archie's adventures from last year here.  None of the pics are as neat as the ones they took last year, but only the last three stops were made this time around.

We arrived at our hotel first and Phillip left me and the kids there.  Archie really, really, really wanted to swim so we thought it would be smarter for Phillip to do the car event by himself.  Especially since it was about a thousand degrees outside.  We'd just whine and spoil his fun.

I wish I could've taken some pictures of the kids swimming, as it was Lydia's first time in a pool and Lawrence's first swim that he could remember.  Archie had a ball.  Lawrence learned he could hop from step to step and hang on the hand rail.  I had to have Lydia in the sling, since I was the only adult with two tiny non-swimmers.  She totally wanted to swim by herself.  Miss independent.

Lawrence got done swimming and was pretty excited to watch tv.  We only get broadcast channels at home and they don't get to watch very much at home, so hotel television time is kind of a treat.  I'm pretty sure Archie would've never been tired of swimming...he'd still be swimming now a week later...but I couldn't leave him in the pool by himself.  Sorry, bud.  TV time made the disappointment more bearable.

The car event took place at the same track that the Indianapolis 500 is raced.  Phillip got to run his car around the track!  Cool!  However, they only let him go like 35 mph.  Bummer.  But it must've been really neat to see the Indy 500 track from the perspective of a driver!

I think he was getting on the track here:

Views of the grand stands from driving on the track.

 

Here's a pic of Phillip's car at the event.

We met some of Phillip's car buddies he met last year on the tour later at a restaurant.  It was funny to me that they still remember here a year later, all about the Red Bull and vodka camping story.

The next day, Phillip took Archie and Lawrence to the Drivers' Meeting in the morning while Miss Lydia and I had a leisure breakfast at the hotel.

Here are the boys in line ready to head to the next destination.  Notice that Lawrence is sporting crazy hair from the morning.

In line, and heading to Muskegon, which is a little North of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I drove to the next town north to meet them and to check out some of The Tour going by.  

Miss Lydia is relaxing and taking it all in.  

Another Archie self-portrait!

I'm sure that Archie took this picture, as it is something that would make him giggle.  A car with a trunk for a trunk!

Lawrence took this picture of Archie's head.  

The weather got cooler as they drove Northward.  I didn't send any long pants with Archie and Lawrence, so Phillip ended up having to stop and purchase some pants and long sleeved shirts.  Lawrence looks like a little ghost in his towel, doesn't he?

Both Archie and Lawrence were really stoked to find an ice cream store called Shaggie's.  You know...Shaggy & Scooby Doo.  Archie took many more pictures than I uploaded here!

Their drive home from Detroit to Cincy was long from what I understand.  I was kind of glad Lydia and I parted company with the boys at Indianapolis.  It was fun getting in some just girl time.  We painted our nails and gossiped for two days straight.  Well, actually, Lydia got to play with toys and not have them taken away from her and we played games such as taking cards out of a box and putting them back in again.  It was fun, but we were glad when the boys arrived home safe and sound.   :-)     

Gang Wars at Versailles State Park--You'd Better Be Packing!

Phillip's week off was chock full of excitement and adventure.  Camping!  Baseball!  Power Tour!  I am exhausted just thinking about it!

First up was camping.  I waited until the last minute to reserve a camping spot because I was having a tough time making a decision on where to go.  We were going for FOUR days!  FOUR!  I wanted to make it a good one.  My first choice was Hocking Hills State Park.  We've been on a day trip before, and I've had a hankering to go back for some time now.  As the crow flies, it's pretty close, but it takes three hours to drive.  Tiny, windy roads.  With having to stuff a make up baseball game in there somewhere, Hocking Hills wasn't in the cards.

My next thought was Caesar Creek State Park.  Although we've never done that particular park, we've done parks in the area and found it quite nice too.  About 45 minutes to an hour.  Not too bad.  The only problem was that it was reported that with the large amount of recent rain, there was lots of e-coli detected in the lake.  Normally I'm not an alarmist, (except perhaps when it comes to news reports about bedbugs!  *shudder*) but with little ones so close to the ground and quite likely to put things in their mouths, I thought we'd better skip it for now.

A friend from baseball recommended Versailles State Park in Indiana.   Only a 50 minute drive, and even closer to the ball park.  They had a pool.  So pool or Lake E-Coli.  The choice was obvious.  Our friend gave us a good scoop on which camp spot was good and stuff to do.

The park was pretty nice with lots of hiking and biking trails, and THE POOL! which featured a curvy slide and good kiddie pool for the little ones.

The first camp packing event after overwintering is a tough one.  I basically had to start from scratch in there because I had taken out everything that had ever had food on it or near it.  I didn't need any mice in my camper over the winter, so I was super careful about mouse-proofing it.  So everything from salt and pepper to knives, to canned goods, to linens had to be packed.  Normally that type of stuff just sits in there til next time.  Sunday was a long day having to think about all of that with two little kids 'helping'.  We didn't arrive to camp until around 7 that evening.

Here we are all set up:

We practically had the whole camp ground to ourselves.  There were some tenters several campsites down, but they left early the next morning.  There were a few folks toward the middle of "A" Campground, but no one really near us.  Which was nice to be able to spread out and hit baseballs, ride our riding toys without fear of being hit by a car, etc.  Camping during the week.  Can't beat that for solitude!  We even left our car unlocked and windows down the whole time!  The kids might have liked to have some other kids to play with, but it was nice and quiet there during the week!

  

I brought some grapes.  Miss Lydia busied herself with eating grapes while we set up.  As we would discover later, she wasn't the only one interested in eating grapes at the picnic table.  In case you were wondering, that was a literary device called foreshadowing.  That's foreshadowing, kids.  

This was the first evening, relaxing with well-deserved adult beverages.  Ahhh.  I was glad I thought at the last minute to bring that bottle of wine.  It tasted goooood.  

Archie takes these odd self-portraits every so-often.  Grinning bug-eyed into the camera.  

Archie took this picture of me.  I guess I was thinking about something.  I dunno.

It was during campfire time that we noticed something.  A masked bandit stealing the grapes! As soon as we'd sit down after chasing him off, he'd reappear, trying to get into whatever was out there.  I put everything away and let him figure out for himself that there was nothing there for him.  Cute little guy, isn't he?  

Archie would be terribly disappointed if I didn't include this picture.  He took it, after all.  I would only put it in the yearbook, ya know, for posterity, but I know I'll never remember to add it if it's not in the blog.  So let's just say that all the Dutton boys made sure our territory was well, ahem, marked, shall we say.  Take that, Raccoon!

The next day, we had a leisure morning, then took a hike to look around.  We found the lake and the camp store.  Lydia couldn't hike one more step.  She was exhausted and fell asleep mid-hike!

Lawrence is inspecting the lake.  

It was at this time that tragedy struck.  We went in the camp store to find out what time the pool opened and we learned, GASP, that the pool opens next week.  Next week?  We're here this week!  This news didn't go over very well with Archie, who had been mentally swimming in the pool since before we even got in the car to go camping.  He asked if we could just go and see the pool, which kinda broke my heart a bit.  We all stood there looking longingly at the beautiful filled swimming pool through the chain link fence for several minutes then headed back to camp.  Geez.  It was 97 degrees that day.  Lake E-Coli was looking better and better.  *sigh*

We rested at camp for a bit, cooked dinner and went to Archie's baseball game.  I'll have more on that in another post.  Suffice it to say, that Archie had an outstanding game that evening!  We had a nice campfire in the evening.  Here's Lawrence enjoying a Coke.

We had another visitor.  This guy was checking out the grey water dripping into my waste water bucket.  Yes, he dumped it out later that night.  Dummy.

While this guy was dang cute, we didn't feed him on purpose.  I know that's terrible for wild animals and plus I didn't want to set a bad example for the kids.  He was cute but I was kind of ready for him to move on.  He was getting rather bold, which was a bit worrysome because I didn't need the kids getting bit.  

The next day, we went on another hike and happened upon this play area.  I realize that I took a few pictures of the same thing, but Lydia's facial expressions were funny to me.  Phillip would push her toward me and she'd make another face.  She's so funny.  And yes, she went hiking in her jammies.  It's one of the benefits of being a baby.  You can do that.  

After we got back from our hike, the little ones took a nap and the boys went to the playground to play with the baseball.  And this is what I did the whole afternoon:

 Our third and final evening, we saw our friend peeking at us around dinner time.  

He even came out to say, "howdy".  And he wouldn't go away.  

He'd scamper to the edge of the campsite, then right back toward us again.  Phillip took the kids to the playground while I was showering.  I got back to the camper and was puttering around cleaning stuff up.  I heard a noise at the door, and assumed it was the kids.  Nope.  Our masked friend poked his tiny black nose inside the camper door and was coming in!  Yikes!  I shooed him away again.  He was obviously biding his time.   

We would be heading out early on Wednesday, so I packed up all the perishable food in the cooler so we could do a quickie job of putting the camper down and heading out to our next adventure which was to begin Wednesday afternoon.  

During campfire time, after the little kids were sleeping, we heard a lot of snarling and carrying on just in the wood right near us.  We couldn't see anything because, of course, I had forgotten to put my 'official' camper flashlight back in the camper.  Archie had a tiny pen light.  That was it.  

The snarling increased to the point that Archie was afraid to pee near the woods.  Apparently 'our' raccoon wasn't the only raccoon who had been sniffing around our campsite.  What do I know?  Raccoons all look alike.  Oh, umm, is that a racist remark?  My apologies to all raccoons reading this.  

The snarling died down along with the camp fire and we went to bed.  Around 4am, I awoke to snarling around our campfire.  Lots of snarling.  Phillip shined Archie's tiny pen light out the window and guess what we found?  

The cooler.  There were a ton of raccoons.  More correctly, a gaze of raccoons.  There was a gang war going on.  Probably between the "A" Campground raccoons and the "B" and "C" Campground raccoons.  You know, for turf.  Cred.  Or for our cooler.  Phillip and I got dressed and headed outside.  The raccoons had torn the lid completely off the cooler.  Ripped the hinges completely off.  They were fighting over individual prizes.  The ham container.  An egg.  The jelly.  They were chewing through coke cans.  They devoured all the Capri Sun pouches.  And the mayonnaise.  They UNSCREWED the mayonnaise jar.  I know because I found the lid.  It was a relatively new container, and I saw one lil guy was having a hard time lugging the bottom part with the mayo in it into the woods.  What kind of animal eats an entire container of mayo?  Gross.  One with a belly ache the next day, to be sure.  

I gathered up wrappers and chewed garbage to throw in the dumpster.  Except when I got to the dumpster, I heard this horrific bonging sound in there.  Bong, boom, boom, boom, bong!  There was no way in hell I was opening the lid to the dumpster.  We stowed garbage and everything in the car.  Phillip rolled up the car windows, locked the doors and locked the storage doors on the side of the camper.  We were taking no chances with creatures who know how to unscrew mayonnaise jars.  My baby doesn't even know how to do that!  We had totally underestimated the intellect, ability and sheer organization of the raccoons and were taking no more chances.  

Putting the cooler away seemed to quiet all the snarls and street fighting for the remainder of the night.  It was hard to get back to sleep after that.  

I got up the next morning, went to the bath house and still heard a faint booming in the dumpster.  I risked a tiny peek in there and saw a very tired raccoon who had pigged out on all our watermelon rinds of the previous day.  There's an Anansi The Spider story about that very same problem that he obviously hadn't read.  (Anansi goes in a hole in a melon, eats all the melon, then is too fat and sluggish to get out, in case you don't know!)   I immediately went to the ranger station and told them.  They asked me to fill out an incident report on the Raccoon Gang War of the last night too.  

We figure the raccoons had us pegged for schmucks from the get go.  They know we think they all look alike and are easy to trick.  There were probably twelve raccoons making their appearances each evening at the camp site and we thought it was only one.  The first day, we thought they were cute.  The next day, they were still cute, but beginning to be slightly annoying.  Then the last night, they were making their move.  That's what all the snarling was about during the campfire.  It was the war dance before the battle was to begin.  What fools we were!  

All in all, the camping was fun and was definitely an adventure.  The pool not being open was a bit irritating, and is something I will verify via telephone in the future, since that is a continuing problem for us.  However, our baseball friend steered us right as far as campground and our spot.  It was great.  "A" campground was shady, had full grown trees, and the campground spaces were more pleasantly organized than "B" or "C".  No city water or sewer, but had dumping stations and water stations, which we didn't need anyway. It was a great park, despite the raccoon thugs, and I would visit again.