Technically, I suppose I could take a shower. As long as I didn’t let the water drain. We typically call that a bath, don’t we? Oooo, and then I could bail the water out with a bucket!! Fun! You should always try to look on the positive side of things, you know.
Anyway, Ron’s getting estimates. Sigh.

Well, it’s bad news, kids, in the flushing department. We are going to have to have the side lines replaced. This is the line that runs from the house, under the driveway, across the front lawn, under the roots of several very tall pine trees, and out to the main line, which is run by the city. Ron is trés unhappy about it. All I hear, when I speak to him, is “thousands of dollars thousands of dollars sigh grumble money anger.” Which is easy for him to say, because he can use water in his place up in Anacortes. Actually, it’s not easy for him to say. It’s apparently very upsetting. I know it would be to me. Which is why I do not own a home. I am too irresponsible to be able to handle the expensive emergencies that could come up. Like this one. I have no idea how much this is going to cost. Or when it will be done. Hopefully this week. I’m running out of clean dishes.
The good news is, garbage service will resume on Thursday! I’ve been living on only yard waste and recycling for the past three weeks. Of course, if someone had told me that food waste, and food soiled paper, count as “yard waste” in this town, it would have helped a little bit. We’ve got quite the little Waste Management plan going in my county, actually. All the recycling in one big blue can. And more stuff than you think can go into “yard waste,” which is a big black can. But that’s not good enough, when you have kitty litter waste. And various garbages created just by being a girl. My green garbage can will be delivered on Thursday. Yay! I’m going to run around the house and separate all my waste and put it into the appropriate can or temporary large plastic bag!
Trash day has never made me so happy.

I went to my mommy’s house to take a shower and perform a toilet. I smell all pleasant and clean. Like soap… and green apples. [that’s the shampoo]. Now I am preheating the oven to make myself some pizza, and my goal this evening is to do something about my disastrous NaNoWriMo word count. And not just because I got a super nice thank you car and sticker, for my donation, in the mail. Surely, if the only requirement is that they are actual words, I can write 50,000 of them by the end of November.
I’ve even turned on that great utility that makes typwritery noises on my mac, as I write. For ambiance.

Sewers are something you probably take for granted. Until you don’t have one. Then, friends, you’ll understand the genius that is indoor plumbing. Our adventure in sewers begins Friday night, when I decided to run a load of darks, in the washing machine. I heard strange gurgling noises. I had heard them before, when I washed clothes. I wasn’t sure why I could hear what was going on in the pipes so clearly, it seemed odd. After I put the clothes in the dryer, I was getting ready for bed, and noticed that there was about two or three inches of blue tinted cold water in the bathtub. I had noticed that the tub was slow draining, since I moved in, but I took a shower the night before. And that was really slow draining. And why was it blue?
The next morning, it was all drained out, I cleaned the lint out of the tub and took a quick shower. When Ron came over that afternoon, to work on the roof, I told him about the shower. And the blue wash water, and the lint. Unfortunately, I did not tell him before he flushed his toilet and it overflowed in his bathroom. I didn’t know!! My toilet had worked fine! I didn’t know we had toilet issues! While I was at the movies with Louise, he called a plumber.
I got home late that night to a note that read “bad sewage issues. Do not flush, shower or wash clothes. Plumber will be back on Monday to finish. Expensive problem!” Since then, I’ve been doing my best to use off site toilets. I worked from home today, and the plumber was here for about 4 hours trying to unstuck whatever is stuck. Couldn’t do it. Ran a camera down the pipes as far as he could go, didn’t find anything, above water at least. So tomorrow, I am working from home again, because the city has to come out and run a “tv” down the “mainline.” In which they can see as far as 7 feet onto our portion of the line. They will determine if it’s on their part, and if not, I call the plumber back in.
I have to tell you, when they explain these things to me, I hear “blah blah tv blah blah main line blah sewer blah blah blah blah tree roots blah blah man hole blah blah.” And it all translates into “no shower for you, smelly girl!!”