Complications

Sometimes life moves along so easily and other times the troubles seem to come in bunches. Ours started last week when the draining bathtub caused gurgling in the toilet. The next day the toilet backed up into the tub. The sink stopped draining. Mark plunged everything. Then he snaked as much as he could. No luck clearing the problem. We went to Seattle to see Jonah. 

Sunday night it snowed. Really hard, even though just for a short while. The roads were slick. Alyson was slipping all over the road, so Mark went to pick Craig & the boys up at the airport for her. He slid into a ditch! At first he couldn't get it out. Finally someone with a wench came by and pulled him out. The only problem he could see was a leak in a radiator hose, so he came home to get radiator fluid and then headed out to pick them up. 

Monday the plumber never showed to snaked the drain. Mark got a new radiator hose and spent the evening replacing it. Very impressive since he has never really worked on the car before. He had finally finished the job when I tried to go get ready for bed. I ran outside yelling for him -- the bathroom is flooding! The kitchen sink had somehow backed up into the toilet so all the water I had used to wash the dishes was now on the floor! (Remember it is about 11 pm by now.) We mopped everything up as best we could. Then Mark went to check the basement. It had completely flooded down there as well! Very lucky for us, the unfinished part of the basement is under the bathroom. By much of the water had run down into the heating vent. So Mark figured out a way to drain the water from the heating vent and swept the water outside. It was very late when we went to bed.

Today the plumber came. Found a paper towel buried way down in the main sewer line. What fun! But at least the drains work and I could run the dishwasher! Then Mark realized that power steering wasn't working in his car. He went and got it checked out at lunch and found out that some part had been knocked off when he hit the ditch. Hopefully insurance will cover it, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Hopefully we done with the crises for a little while. At least all is well and no one was actually hurt (just scarred from seeing sewage in the bathtub!) I hope tomorrow is a nice, quiet day.