Monkey-wrenching

I answered the call during my drive home from work. It was the MonkeyWife, and I could tell it was trouble because she was speaking in one-word sentences.

Fez Monkey: Hey, MonkeyWife … what’s up?
MonkeyWife: Trouble
FM: Oh? What sort of trouble? Trouble: the house burned down; trouble: we have no beer; trouble: little Timmy O’Toole is stuck down a well?
MW: Sink
FM: Uh oh ... which one?
MW: Bathroom
FM: Is the faucet dripping again? I just changed the entire valve last month.
MW: Clog
FM: Okay, no problem ... I'll get to it after dinner. What is for dinner tonight, by the way?
MW: Food

I was putting a brave front during out talk, but this was going to be worse than I thought. I would be cast in the role of a man, which isn't something I am always good at playing. I'm much better suited for the role of pre-adolescent.

Anyway, when I got home the MonkeyWife was waiting with our snake in her hand. She handed it to me, pointed into the bathroom, and walked away.

The sink was clogged alright, and it smelled. Worse than me, which is saying something (another sad trait of Italians). So, after changing into a tee shirt and some torn shorts, I got to working. Now, running a snake down a drain isn't a big problem. Unless, of course, the drain has a rod running along the diameter. Snakes tend to have a flared head, in order to help grab and shred whatever clog of goo it touches. The flare of the snake was too big to get past this rod. All of this added up to the ugly truth that I would have to go beneath the sink, remove the trap, and run the snake from the slip-point coupling to reach the clog. (Don't be impressed ... I learned these terms online. I call them the curvy pipe and the long straight one).

So, I get our big-ass plumber's wrench - which to this point I have never used other than to wield as a threat against Eggs when his philosophical nonsense becomes too much to take. After much grunting and cursing, I managed to position myself beneath the sink. More grunting and more cursing loosened the top connection of the curvy pipe. How do I know I had loosened it? The flow of icky, smelly water now splattering my hands and hitting the bathroom floor.

Needless to say I didn't anticipate the fact that the water in the sink would have to go somewhere, and so had no bucket or anything to catch the water. Fortunately, MonkeyWife has seen me try and be a man before, and she had one ready. "You might need this," she mentioned once the water began to leak. Yeah, I might at that.

At this point I had a flash of inspiration. There would be no need for me to totally remove the curvy pipe. Since it was below the stopper bar, I could run the snake through it! I felt smarter than Einstein. I bet he never unclogged any sinks. So, in went the snake.

Now, running a snake is a process of starts and stops. You start by feeding the auger line a few inches until you feel resistance, followed by a few shots with the drill (which you connect to the snake to make it do that roto-rooter thing) to rotate it and move it forward, followed by more feeds of the auger line. The thing was, I could only get the snake in about three inches (of course, for some people, three inches is all they can manage, but I digress). Something was wrong, and oddly enough, the damn snake was now stuck. As it turned out, the curvy pipe had rusted through at the bend, and my snake was now poking through it. Yeah, I needed to get a new curvy pipe.

But first thing first. I needed to get at the clog. So, removing the curvy pipe completely, I started the frustrating start-and-stop feeding of the snake, eventually hitting a point where there was some severe resistance, and the drill was laboring to rooter. After a few moments of drilling and back-and-forth snake maeuvering, things finally broke free, and I was doused with a backflush of a considerable amount of icky, smelly water - with chunks of icky, smelly, black goo in in.

I was definitely earning my man-status now.

While I was engaged in this, the MonkeyWife had taken the curvy pipe with her to a local hardware store and bought a replacement. She arrived just in time to hand it to me, as I was using a smelly old dog rag to clean some of the thicker and stickier chunks of icky, smelly black goo from myself.

More grunting and cursing as I installed the new curvy pipe.

Finally, I stood up, my work finished, and turned on the faucet with triumphal theatrics. Water rushed into the sink, there was a small amount of gurgling, followed by the sink rapidly filling with water. The clog was still there.

Whatdidn't make sense was, if the clog was so far along the line (I fed close to 20 feet of snake before I hit paydirt), how could the sink become filled so quickly?

Back under I went, complete with grunts and curses, to once again remove the curvy pipe, only to again be soaked by sink water (at least this time it wasn’t icky and smelly). Yeah, I forgot to put the bucket down.

I removed the cuvy pipe and started to re-snake the line when the MonkeyWife called to me.

MW: Monkey …
FM: (grunting) Yah?
MW: Why are you doing that?
FM: You saw the sink . It’s still clogged. (cussing)
MW: Monkey …
FM: What!!

At this point she tapped me to get my attention. I turned and she showed me the curvy pipe. There was a plastic bag containing instructions and extra connectors shoved inside it.

Hey, I said I wasn’t good at playing the man.

Ook ook