Update:  The Great Septic System Debacle

So, I got a call last week that Steve would be coming back today to do the fall maintenance for our septic system.  Ha!  Not gonna get me this time Steve!  I have been an angel!  I have been the poster girl for septic system care!  I will not be humiliated again!

I planned my morning.  I would get the kiddos off to school, pretty myself up and await his arrival while I sipped my morning tea.  He was scheduled for 9:30am.

I did actually end up a bit behind schedule.  Hitting the snooze button 5 times will set a girl back a bit ya know.  I rolled out of bed and into the kitchen to start making the boys lunches for school.  I was still in my baggy, blue flannel pajamas.  There was dishes piled up to the ceiling and no-ones lunch box could be found.  While I was roaming the house looking for lunchboxes I heard the dogs start going crazy, barking like we were being invaded.  This is a strong indication that somebody is at the door. Since nobody in my family is capable of answering a phone or a door, I trudged up to get it myself.  So there I am, bleary eyed, in my jammies with, very obviously, no bra on and who should be standing at the door a full hour and a half early??!!

I opened the door exactly one centimeter and placed one crusty, bleary eye up to the crack.  Yep, it's Mr. Handsomepants.  Dammit.  Now, you may think that just cracking the door open a tiny bit would have preserved some of my modesty, dignity and pride, and it may have, if my front door wasn't a solid sheet of transparent plate glass!!!!!!  There was no hiding. Humiliation complete.

But apparently God hadn't had all his fun with me yet today.  After Steve left I went into the bathroom to get dressed, you know, just in case anyone else decided to stop by at the crack of freaking dawn, and this is what I saw in the mirror:

What the multiple fucks is wrong with my hair.?  I look like an electrocuted porcupine! God dang it!!!!!

Well, there's always spring maintenance. 

Michy

The Great Septic System Debacle!

I should just go ahead and make a tab for this blog called, "Humiliating Myself".  I am just so good at it!  I never seem to run out of opportunities to totally and completely embarrass myself on a grand scale.

So, I know it's been forever since my last post, so allow me to update: we moved!  We moved to my dream log cabin in the woods!  I must say country life agrees with me!  Fresh air, lots of trees, deer and bunnies running around everywhere.  Love it!  However, with country life come a few things we may not have really given much thought to.  The constant screeching chatter of red squirrels, the unbelievable volume of mating frogs in spring and the snakes that make my retaining wall home, just to name a few.  Oh yes, and we have kissed sweet, fluid, city plumbing goodbye in favor of a country style shit management system, The Septic System.

To be fair, I think we have the most high tech septic system this side of the space shuttle.  When I was a kid, you flushed, shit went down the tube and into the tank.  End of story.  Our new septic system has pumps, aerators, a control panel with blinky lights and alarms.  It's ridiculous!  So when those lights and alarms started going off one day I didn't even think of trying to MacGyver a repair, I just called the septic repair company listed on the control panel.

The next day, promptly at ten, there is a knock on my door.  It's "Steve" from the septic repair shop. Steve just happens to be incredibly good looking.  I would guess, late forties, but held up reeeeeeaaalll nice.  Great skin, short blond hair and beautiful blue eyes, nice and slim and all blue collar-ey in his all purpose coveralls.  He's just letting me know he'll be working on the system and that he'll come back later and let me know what the problem was.  I get all eye lash batty and let him know, that's just great and I'll be waiting.

So I go down to our computer desk to kill some time.  It just happens to sit beneath a huge picture window that looks out on the septic system, (not as unattractive as it sounds, I swear), and I just happen to catch Steve at work.  As I'm logging into Pinterest I see him pop the lid off the tank and pull out aerator, the source of our problems.  It's a motor with a big long stick on it that branches out into three little sticks at the bottom.

Haaza!  I found a picture!

The purpose of this gizmo is to stir your turds around or something.  And don't be fooled by it's sturdy looks.  This is one sensitive little dandy.  It doesn't like anything that might get in the way of it mixing up the perfect poop smoothie.

So anyway, Steve pulls out the aerator, takes one look and says, "I knew it"! (I kinda had the window open too).  There is a huge gob of disgusting-ness stuck to the bottom of the pole.  Steve starts pulling it all off with his big work gloved hands and dropping the yuckiness into his handy bucket.  I said to myself, "Ew!  Gross!", and went back to Pinterest.  I looked up a few minutes later to see poor Steve pull out a knife and start hacking away at whatever it was that was wrapped around the bottom of the pole.  Poor guy, I thought.  I wouldn't even ask my husband to do this gross job and this dude has to do it for strangers.  Oh well, I was paying him after all and I was in the middle of a really great pin about shoe organization.

About 15 minutes later, he done.  He knocks on the door to give me the lowdown and the receipt. Geeze, I'm so glad I did my hair and make-up this morning!  I open the door widely and flash my smiley-est smile.  Here is our conversation:

Me: Hey, everything go ok? (much eyelash batting going on)

Steve:  Yep, it's all cleaned out and I've done your maintenance checks.  You should be good now until the fall.

Me:  Great! So what was the problem?

Steve:  Well, you had a huge wad of old tampons wrapped around your aerator and that threw it out of whack.  You really can't flush things like that.  You also can't flush used condoms, hair, whomp, womp, murmurlem, muarnrk, smurgle . . . . . . 

Me: (Blink, Blink)

Steve:  (I'm sure he said a bunch of really important things about septic system care here, but I wasn't hearing any of it.  I was so embarrassed, I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.  All I recall is ),  Here's your bill and I'll see you in the fall for your regular maintenance.

Me:  (Blink, blink)

I closed the door as I watched him walk away, went and threw myself on my bed and screamed into my pillow.

Now, I grew up in the sticks, so I am not unfamiliar with the rules of septic living, however years of spoiled city life had me thinking maybe I could get away with some things. Apparently not.  When I finally composed myself I vowed that come the fall I would make a much better impression than that first visit.  I mean, it couldn't get much worse right?

Stay tuned . . .