Glug Glug Glug Went the Drainpipe

As I might have explained before, we have an outdoor shower which we use as much as possible. From April until about November, it's the only place to take a shower. That means a) very little cleaning of the tub in the warm months, b) no hair down the drain and c) lots of fabulous outdoor showers. K-ster says I must be part duck because I splash water at every sink and would in the indoor shower if I knew it wouldn't soak the floor. I love to splash around in the outdoor shower and no one cares. One would also think that this meant no problems with the cesspool. Where we live, we don't have sewer systems, we have cesspools that look like this:Kind of looks like a rabbit hole, huh? The theory is that you build two of these out of cement blocks or bricks. All of the drains go into this and then you have a pipe going to the second one for overflow. Over time, the water will drain into the soil (thus we are what we flush here) and the solids will need to be pumped at some point. Since there are just two of us and we take most showers outside and have a second toilet that is on a separate cesspool, I think we should never ever had to pump it.The system thought otherwise and about a month ago told me that something was wrong. I noticed a lot of dirt in the bathtub one day but no water and no one had taken a shower, so I chalked it up to weird. Some time later, when I was using the washing machine, I noticed that when I flushed there was a tremendous gurgling sounds in the washing machine pipes which are not really close to the toilet. I told k-ster who made a snide remark and since it didn't happen again, I wasn't too concerned.
Yesterday we had a repeat of the gurgling except this time the toilet threatened to overflow. I left k-ster a voicemail about not using the toilet and he got it too late and had to mop everything up. Then I just couldn't resist, so I flushed last night and all was well. All was not well this morning, so I called the guy to come pump. They come in a truck like this:And we've used this company for as long as I can remember. It's quite a vacuum he brings, and here are his other tools:
Yep, just a shovel and a hook. The hook lifts the cement cover(you didn't think we just had these gaping holes, did you?) This was extra fun because though 2 covers are right at ground level and easy to find, the main cover is buried so then it becomes like an easter egg hunt. Only dirty. They have a marvelous pipe you stick in the ground until you hit what sounds like cement and then you dig. Now that this will forever live in the blogosphere, I will only have to look here to remember the exact location so it won't be a needle in a haystack, or a cesspool in the lawn, as I call it.

Once he started pumping, he realized that the pipe was glogged so he needed his snake. I don't know about real snakes, but I do hate the metal kind that you have to use when snaking a drain that is clogged. I hate them because a) I think they are just so gross as they are LOADED with bacteria and b) they are completely unmanageable beasts because they are long, thin and metal. He wresteld with this for a long time but managed to stick it into the pipe, without losing his sunglasses which is a feat, and eventually unplugged it. To the tune of some kind of ridiculous money.

It's been 5 years since we've had it pumped and I remember because a friend of mine was visiting and as we were departing for the bus station, the washer backed up all over the laundry room. This guy claims we have to do this every year and when I said 5 years he was alarmed. I claim we only have to do this when there's a problem. Most people claim that pumping them regularly prevents the problems. I am all for preventive maintenance but I am also Thrifty Cheap Frugal and therefore cannot stomach paying to pump something that isn't full every year or two. If they charge whether it's full or halfway full, I say let's wait until it's full. Until everyone has arrived and is lined up to use the bathroom and now the toilet is flowing into the living room.

Camper's Delight

I seem to have blogger's block, but I will do my best.

My family owns a campground and has since I was 2. My mother grew up here and then tried to move 1 town away but came back to run the show and then we grew up here. Keep in mind, I like to call it a campground because that portrays a better picture than a trailer park, which is what my mother calls it. This is what I see when you say TRAILER PARK.

This is what I see when you say CAMPGROUND.

So, please remember, we grew up next to a CAMPGROUND, not a TRAILER PARK. And at no point did we ever live IN the trailer park or campground. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

So, I really wish I'd taken a picture when I could sense there was something blog worthy forming, but I felt that I would intrude on these people's privacy so I left it alone. But here's the story and you will spend the whole time wishing I had snapped a few pictures. My mother told me that a couple had arrived with a trailer and paid in full for the two weeks (our max so that we don't end up like a
but she still wasn't feeling good about it. I found out when I walked down to see it. It had been stripped. All of the lights that should have been on the outside were missing. The metal thing that covers a hot water heater on the outside was missing and they didn't even have one. The license plate was held on with zip ties. They weren't hooked up to the water because they had no pipes inside. The electrical work was missing so they had run an orange extension cord inside. Oh boy. And they smoked like chimneys. And they had 2 dogs who didn't bark much. And they drove a beat up truck that was just as bad as the trailer and they told my mother it didn't reverse.

And then I noticed the "curtains". In most trailers, you have either crank out windows or, in most new models, windows that slide open on a track. These people had some crank out windows. And then they had some pop out windows. This meant that they broke the seal on the bottom of a window that wasn't meant to open and they propped the glass out by putting a piece of 2 by 4 to keep it propped open. And then their "curtains" were pieces of plywood that they had set against the windows so that only about the top 6 inches were clear glass. You can imagine that this wasn't going to last long here in a so my mother spent every day wishing they would go away. And then her wish came true. They took the truck and the dogs and NOTHING ELSE and called her from another state and said they were sorry to run out but they had been working for some very rude/mean people who gave them that trailer and then tried to make them remodel it while living in it. She gave the number of the woman who they worked for and said that maybe they would come take it back.

And then I went down to see what they had left behind. For starters, the trailer, all windows cranked/propped open as wide as could be. A huge load of lumber that was going to be used to remodel the thing. Clothes on a clothesline. Food. Like they were in the middle of a meal and one said let's go and the other said OK and they just took off. The trash they had ripped out of the trailer to remodel it. And my mother stood there doing the I Told You So dance until she turned blue.

Amazingly, when the employers were called to come retrieve this trailer, they did. But they left the crap. Until today. I went over to put it all in the truck to haul it to the dump (so it wouldn't look like we lived in a and it was all gone.

Now if only I had taken some pictures so we could all have such fashionable curtains. And I could sell them on my etsy.
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UPDATE:  After I had posted this, about week later, I saw the trailer and posted this:
 You can't forget the couple with the sad trailer from Camper's Delight earlier this week. Sadly, I had no pictures. UNTIL LAST NIGHT!!! There I was, minding my own business while running in a road race, two towns away, when what did I spy with me little eye?I know, I almost had to come to a complete stop during the race, I was so shocked. One would not forget a sad case such as this, and even though I was several hundred yards away, I knew what I saw. And this made sense. The part I didn't tell you in my earlier post is that the mean employer in this case is a family member of a very notable, politically famous family here in the region. As I ran past a parking lot that has recently been named after another family member in this prominent family, I happened to glance over and see that that's the trailer, so indeed, the employer really is a member of this particular famous family. I hadn't believed it until then. So after I ran, I had to go back and take some pictures.This is a back corner of the trailer and looks distinctly like it was crushed. And the glass is broken, which is odd, because these are crank out windows, not the other kind I mentioned that they had propped open with 2 x 4s.Here's the missing water heater box.
And here are the missing lights, wonder how they got it down the road. All of this gave me a chuckle because it's now like this trailer and its saga is following me!

Feel Good Friday

It's time for the 5 things that made me laugh or smile this week. Visit The Girl NExt Door Grows Up for more!

1. I was thrilled by my garden when I found an unexpected cucumber and it tasted great! I am also pleased to see some tomatoes turning red. One had to be picked today because it's splitting open. Hopefully it will continue to turn red and will taste fab. I was also thrilled to see little corn ears popping out( but not popcorn this year!) and a couple of broccoli plants returning from the dead- with a vengeance, it seems. Slugs be damned!

2. It made me smile in a wicked way when I discovered how to pull the wool over the eyes of the firewall at school. I'm taking a technology grad course this week and it's about neat programs you can use for free on the internet to do some great stuff. I give you http://www.jingproject.com/ which is fabulous. It allows me to make movies or images of things on my computer. Why would I do this? Well, I made a sample movie about how to use my school blog. This way, kids can play it until they are blue in the face and will know all of the features of the blog. Then I won't have to talk until I am blue in the face. I also learned that you can "steal" pictures. Did I just say that? Oops. Yes, you can jing a picture that you can't nornally right click on and ta-da, you will have access to put it wherever you want and print with abandon. So, pictures of cousin Rita's wedding that you can see on pictage but can't print? Jing it, baby and it's yours! But my FAVORITE piece of information is that I can jing a youtube video and then actually play it at school if I post a link to the jing file on my blog. Our school system won't allow youtube to open without standing on your head, so this is my big eff-you to them! Hee hee hee. Now of course, I have to go look at youtube and find things I actually want to snag, so I guess I'm the one who's effed. But I'm glad I have this little nugget of information.

3. It made me happy when the weather started out very dry at the beginning of the week so I actually wanted to be outside. We won't talk about the weather since Wednesday.

4. It made me happy that we were able to celebrate my mother's birthday with her brothers and their wives. We had a little cookout and no one yelled at anyone about how their burgers were cooked. We had lots of laughs over very silly things.

She's going to kill me for posting this, but I got it off of her blog, so I guess it's free game!

Here's the 1/2 of the laugh factory generating some more words of wisdom.

We didn't have a #6 candle, so my sister put a 5 and 1 together and then a 2.

5. I laughed so hard in a dream that I woke up laughing. That is truly the strangest experience I've ever had.

Big Letdowns

Yes, a garden disaster is what I classify as a BIG LETDOWN. It's the little things that thrill or kill me. I refuse to fertilize with anything but compost and I have never used anything with the word "cide" in it. I am not certified organic but my methods are very much organic. While my tomatoes plant are becoming trees and the morning glory has threatened to choke out every living thing, the squash plants are sucking the life out of themselves. I appear to have a nasty thing called "squash borer". It's a fat, white, grubby bastard that enters the plant at the ground level, through a crack, and bores its way in to grow big and fat and ruin the plant. I found one the other day and smashed it into goo. I suspect my other yellow squash plants are suffering the same fate. I'm not a huge fan of yellow squash**, but my mother is and I'm disappointed she won't get any.

It's a sad day when you realize that a plant you've grown all summer isn't going to hold up its end of the bargain. I expect that if I plant something and get it to grow, it should grow and produce as long as I take care of it. I have numerous squash plants that it looks like I will have to remove. And then I can't grow them for a few summers to hopefully "trick" the little shits into thinking that we don't have squash here, so they will move along and forget about us. I also hope they don't get into other squash varieties because I like to grow cucumbers (also not holding up their end of things this year) and butternut or pumpkins.

** I just this summer learned that you can take a potato peeler and peel of the outer yellow peel of summer squash and zucchini and then you have less "squeaking" when you eat it. I hate the squeak. I'm more willing to eat it when it's squeak free!

I'm So Excited

Yep, about tomatoes. It takes so little to give me such joy. I usually have to wait until about September for my tomatoes to turn. Last year, I saved a ton of seeds from 2 kinds of plants and all that I planted actually grew. One is Brandywine and the other is Mortage Lifter, both heirlooms. Sadly, I might have created some cross pollination because I grew them near each other, so I really don't know what I'm getting for fruit. On each plant there are some tomatoes that are all crunkly and ugly like heirlooms and there are also some nice smooth tomatoes that look like Brandywine. But I'm excited because two tomatoes, on 2 different plants are turning! It's early August and I might get to enjoy a tomato of my own before school starts!


So I'm very excited. Did I mention that? These plants are on my patio, which is significantally hotter than the garden, so nothing red is happening in the garden yet. I especially like the Brandywine because they are kind of pink. You might remember, I have a think about pink: see here or here to find out about my pink hysteria.
Ahh, the little things.

What I Learned in School

I am so damned creative, I don't know what to do with myself! I am taking a technology course this week and it's mostly about digital pictures and what to do with them to do nifty things. We were introduced today to Picasa, a snazzy program that lets you do crazy things with pictures without having to know much abuot editing photos. I went to Paris in 2003 and took a bunch of pictures. I have had them sitting in flickr for a while but I imported them into Picasa and look what I was able to create! It was a version of a collage and I could pull any picture into the center, but otherwise didn't have to do anything with the rest of them.

This could result in yet another way to waste an amazing amount of time fiddling with things. But is it pretty snazzy.

We ETSY, Do You?

It's all about me today. I'm just talking about me. Shameless but I'm doing it anyway. I started an etsy last week and have some things for sale on it. I am most excited about the 6 Fishy Pillows. You can buy one or more- they are meant to go together. They were originally squares for a quilt but one thing led to another and six pillows came out instead. Great primary colors.


Well, maybe it's not all about me. My sister also has an etsy. Go see her amazing Coffee Handlers. She devised these things to carry your take out coffee cups without spilling them all over the place. Then you can use your keys, phone, etc and not become a certified juggler in the process. They are a bargain at $5 and I bet she could be coerced into making them in your choice of colors. Maybe it says that on the etsy, I can't remember. I'm not a big take out coffee drinker but I know there are millions of you out there and she is more than happy to help you feed your addiction while keeping things spill free!

She also embroiders and had a really cool picture of a bride and groom embroidered with the date of the wedding and a really pretty pieced background. That seems to be missing but if you look at the banner on the top of her page, you will see a house embroidered and it's along those lines. When she reads this, maybe she'll put the picture back up and amaze you all!

We are a family of crafty critters, so you never know what you'll see from us next. My mother is threatening to open an etsy next and it will be all quilted stuff, so WATCH OUT!!