THE HUNDRED DOLLAR FEMININE PRODUCT

Our drains have been running slow. Sometimes the drain in the laundry room bubbleleth and water poureth forth onto the floor, not unlike what happened when Moses lowered his staff and the Egyptions had to swim. Then the laundry-room-water-on-the-floor e-v-e-r so slowly drains. Not today. It bubbleth and stayeth.

I rounded up all the worn out beach towels and ratty old towels that I don't even remember ever using in real life and sopped up the water and then Mr. Fixit, who couldn't fix this, started calling for help. All those nifty "router" guys wanted $300. THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS! Now I ask you, does that sound like a reasonable number to you? Me neither.

He called the rental places. They want eighty dollars to rent one of those snakey things. Rootmaster came for an even hundred and did a fantastic job and he went home with a bag of homemade caramels as a thank you. (We don't know how to tip but we do know how to make caramels.)

So if you live here in Happy Valley--Provo/Orem, Utah area, give them a call because they were very accommodating and quick and brought a humongous snakey thing that roared through our drains and brought up a--men, turn your head away while I mention this little item to the girls--a Tampax. A very unrecognizable Tampax but one never the less. He said that the little hundred-dollar-items catch on a seam in a pipe or a root, in the drain that goes from the house to the sewer, and then bits of food--we don't use a garbage disposal so that doesn't apply here--no, we're not purists but the last time we had drain problems the drain-guy said don't put food down our garbage disposal unless it's just mashed potatoes--and anyway our garbage disposal was grinding it's last and so we didn't replace it, but I am getting off the subject with one of those run on sentences I use so often. Anyway, the drain guy said food or tissues catche on it--and probably other things that he was too polite to mention--and everything swells and then your laundry room is puddling with wash water from the Nile. See this little jewel? It is forty-years old. I love the old thing. Notice the fine Clorox product? I should get dollars in the mail for my fine product placement, don't you think?

I am so sorry I didn't take a picture of that nifty snakey thing that went eighty feet into our drains and all the way off our property, probably. But, here is the mess that was made--not by Rootmaster--a former plumber, who couldn't get the master drain clean-out-thing off, really beat up our wall about eighteen years ago and we have just lived with it ever since. We don't move real fast around there in Happy Valley.

The horribly filthy mystery towels are, at this very moment, in the forty-year-old washer with about half a gallon of that bleach that I so carefully placed so I would get big bucks from the Clorox people. Too bad it won't be a hundred dollars.