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 . . .