Things I never thought I'd do in life...

We live in a house that was built in 1890. Since 1890 the house was renovated at least four times, and every time it was done worse than the time before. When we had our roof redone, there was five layers of shingles to tear off. When we redid our carpet upstairs, there was four layers of flooring to tear up. There is basically always something going on with this house, whether it's a problem we've had for awhile(like the windows that desperately need to be replaced) or something that just springs up... it's a constant thing.

I should stop here and explain that we've been working on renovations since I moved in here in February of 2006. We've been working on trying to refinance the house to renovate for almost two years now. My husband had a previous marriage and long story short, his credit was shit after the divorce(excuse my language, but honestly, there is no other word to describe how bad it was). Of course, right around the time we started trying to refi, the housing market crashed and it became next to impossible to get a loan. You have to have a much much higher credit rating to do so now. So now I'm months away from paying off the last bit and getting a refi process going. Then I'm going to get out my list of things to renovate that Grover made for me before he left and get to paying people to finish making this historic house beautiful again!

So you have all the usual problems that you'd have in an old house, and then you add on top of that... Isaac and Lysander. Who's main mission in life is to leave a wake of distruction in their path.

Culprit: Isaac
Victim: Toilet
Device: Disney Pixar's Cars

All of a sudden Isaac's favorite thing to do is throw things in the toilet. I've been fishing things out of the toilet for a couple of weeks. Well, all of a sudden, toilet not working. So the obvious thing I'm thinking is I missed a toy and flushed and then it was clogged. I tried plunging. Nothing. I then thought we have this snake thing that GJ had to buy after I broke the toilet when Isaac was a few days old(WHOLE other story), I'll try to figure out how to use that... Not a self explanitory tool first of all, but second of all... Nothing.

So then my Mom and Fred come over and Fred tries to use the snake and plunge the toilet. Nothing. Mom says that my Aunt Julie's husband does something with plumbing, so she calls my aunt and she agrees to come over and bring her lovely husband and help me out. I tell her it's not a big deal, we have another toilet, come whenever. So Julie and Joe come today and I of course want to help as much as I can since Joe is doing this for free, and really saving my ass because Lysander does not want to go potty upstairs anymore. (I'm kind of swearing a lot in this post. In life that is totally how I am, but I'd like to keep this clean, so I'm going to pull back on that now.)

So Joe does hsi thing with the snake(as my aunt and I giggle about his skillful use of the snake... yes my family is disturbed) and can't get anything out. So then he ventures down into the scary cellar and turns off the water to the house because apparently on normal toilets you can turn the water to the toilet off but of course not at my house. He tells me I need two buckets and some gloves and a cup. Of course I understand what I'm about to do, and it's really not that bad.

If there was ever a list of THINGS I NEVER THOUGHT I'D DO IN LIFE, this would have made the top five. Then Joe has to take the toilet off completely... was NOT prepared for how disgusting that would be. I immediately wanted to go buy a new toilet. Joe snakes the toilet from the other end(more giggles) and finally pushes out the white car and another peice of a lego car. Awesome. By this time of course there is what we will call here... dirty chunky water all over my floor. Awesome. So I thank them profusely(and absolutely mean it) and they leave. Of course while there is "dirty chunky water" all over my floor all hell breaks lose in my house. (I swear, it's unavoidable for that swear word too. That's the last one, promise!) Isaac is freaking out, Lysander wants leftover pizza for dinner and the dog keeps trying to walk in the dirty chunky water.

I believe my Aunt took pictures of the process, but I'm going to go ahead and leave those off. I hope my words created a pleasing enough visual. Floors got cleaned, boys calmed down, and I used the potty and it all went down perfectly. Check that one off the bucket list.