My nemesis years ago ended up being roots in the pipe.
Worked great. Then treated every spring to prevent recurrence.
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We had a situation like that a while back. Luckily our neighbor is a plumber, and we frequently trade services. He came over and brought his power auger. Took off the toilet and ran down through there, finally found the clog out in the back yard near the junction with the main line. Plumbing is like black magic to me.
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The roots that the guy from Drain Addict pulls out occasionally are like how did this not completely clog up months ago.
Yes I have developed a small addiction to drain unclogging videos.
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Years ago, my neighborâs tree across the street from my old house took out my sewage line. The exploratory digging and replacement was probably the worst/most expensive plumbing problem Iâve ever had. Anytime the drains seemed a bit slow I used boiling water and bleach, while hoping the tree roots werenât the source of the problem again.
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Wait. From across the street?! What kind of tree was it?
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A poplar, IIRC. It was so tall, it probably wouldâve reached my house if it fell down in that direction, and every lot on the block had a pretty large setback from the curb. The back property lines were one-third of the distance to the foundation, while the front lines were two-thirds.
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The sycamores across the street from me do the same thing. Yearly rooterings until the pipes crack, then up comes the street. Iâm not looking forward to it.
It turns out nearly any tree of sufficient age will send roots across the street. This surprised me, there not really being any water until it gets to the pipes. In my case, the trees are more than 60 years old. Possibly nearly 100.
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We considered a sycamore for a backyard shade tree until I did some research. No way. We went with a Mexican white oak/Monterrey Oak. It has pretty peach growth in spring l. We have a lot of sycamores in the neighborhood, a few near houses. The rest closer to the pond.
Visited a new townhouse development a bit back. They planted sycamores less than 5 feet from some of the buildings! I warned my friends they needed to take that up with the HOA stat.
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The clogs are cleared! When I cut the pipe, my first thought at seeing the inside was to back off and throw a fire bomb. Ugh, the pipe was fully jammed with spongey grey/white gunk, like plumbing wasps had built a nest in there. Second thought was to go get the larger toilet auger, which has a better crank. In the end, the ShopVac did the job. (I could tell when the downstream clog cleared, there was a definite change in atmosphere.)
Now I just have to drain it one last time, and glue the connection. Cleaning the ShopVac, I leave as an exercise to⌠me. shit.
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Did I mention I hate plumbing? Nothing but grossness!
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Ewww. That brought to mind the studio apartment I had in Chicago. The bathtub drain wasnât flowing well, and the super brought up his shop vac and sucked out a slimy hairball as long as my arm. Apparently, some longhair had occupied the apartment before me.
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Spent the morning trying to track down Murder Cat at the municipal shelter, the humane society and a couple rescue groups. Murder Cat was the neighborhood cat, abandoned about a year ago by the awful renters across the street, that three or four of us were feeding and taking care of. My daughter had made him her project, and he had warmed up to her over the last six months or so, becoming a friendly yet still aloof semi-feral cat who liked company, cuddles and scritches on his terms. He hadnât been around in about a week, so she put up âHave you seen me?â posters in the neighborhood. Gossipy neighbor said that the neighbor across the street had been trying to civilize him, and when that was unsuccessful, he took him to the shelter. Not a word to us or the other family with kids who were tending him. I ambushed the neighbor yesterday to confirm, which he did, but also gave me conflicting information about when and why.
Murder Cat is not at the shelter, no one remembers him coming in or recognizes the photo, and thereâs no record of him. That was such a dick move; there was no problem with Murder Cat until that neighbor tried to bring him indoors. Had he bothered to ask, we could have told him that wouldnât work because that had been tried before.
Kiddo is absolutely gutted.
Update: After much wrangling with the neighbor, I got him to give me the surrender paperwork from the shelter. He had surrendered the cat under a false name (WTF???), and with that info, the shelter was able to track down what happened to Murder Cat. He was adopted two days after being brought in. So, as happy an ending for the cat as could have been hoped for, but Kiddo is still beyond sad and righteously (IMHO) pissed at the neighbors.
I realize that the fate of a cat is minor in the scheme of all the really shitty things going on in the world and in peopleâs lives. But he was a bright spot in Kiddoâs constrained and upended life, and she had done so much to make him pet-worthy. It just killed me to see that little joy snatched away.
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This has been a medium shitty week. Not quite as dire as some of the posts Iâve read from @knoxblox so I know I need to count my blessings.
I used to roll with the punches better before. Chalk it up to 4 years of living under Cult45, with a non-zero possibility of more of the same but of course, so very much worse in Round Two.
So⌠in between looking at belongings I can liquidate on craigslist, âfridge and cupboard roundupâ dinner, and a sloppy meditation before bed⌠this. I started writing a bitchy list of most of the crap that has gone wrong but then I erased it because even I didnât wanna read through it. People bailing on agreements, unexpected big expenses, getting our sophomore back to college (heâs GTFO of a very hot COVID county in Texas, heading to a decent well-run part of the U.S. I hope). Our famâs close-precariat; weâre looking at where that financial edge meets the abyss. We still have our living quarters, Iâll take that for a win.
Things are gonna slide 
Slide in all directions
Wonât be nothing
Wonât be nothing
You can measure any more
I feel a minor temper tantrum coming, which in our 100°F+ temperatures (~38°C) costs almost more time and energy than itâs worth.
And I thought, why not turn it into a fucking dance party?
Admittedly this party would play some really downer music on the playlist but your patience shall be rewarded. Plus, I donât smoke and I donât drink, so this may be as good as it gets for me now.
Hereâs Hayes Carll to start us off with KMAGYOYO1 which feels very âlightning in a bottleâ in 2020. Remember when crowds of people did not induce a creeping horror of sharing a semi-lethal virus? Live from Austin, Texas in 2011:
R.L. Burnside got the message. I thought he was really on to something2 when I heard this in '98. Looking back, he was trying to warn us all, IMO.
Leonard Cohen says it for me:
Thank you so much friends.
Weâre so privileged to be able to gather in moments like this when so much of the world is plunged into darkness and chaos. SoâŚ
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
Thatâs how the light gets in
- KMAGYOYO = Kiss My Ass Guys, Youâre On Your Own
- Nice story about him here in the New Yorker
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One of my projects for lock-in was to get a faulty Oculus Rift working.
Hopefully it will still work without paying the Zuckerberg toll, at least until 2023.
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Damn you, Kevin.
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Damn kid had the chance to take out Trump in '92 and botched itâŚ
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I saw the headline and thought it was real.
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