STEWING IN SEWAGE

Our sewer was backed up for 2 days. The water pipes WERE frozen, and the drain pipe was frozen for 2 days without any sign of thawing even with a heat gun on it for hours on end.

The toilets were full almost to the brim, so using it was quickly becoming impossible. Hyatt was allowed to pee in the toilet as long as he stood (no one is allowed to stand at my toilets on a normal basis). The only reason I allowed him to do that was because he couldn't sit, since his...uh...anatomy would have become a sewage submarine. If you've seen Hyatt naked, you know what I mean. Let's just say he's "blessed". Kiersa, too, was allowed to use the toilet since she suddenly decided she wanted to potty train instead of using a diaper, and you can't turn back once that begins or you ruin any effort you exerted. She has a potty seat that would hold her above the flood waters. No one else was allowed to use the toilet.

So what did we use? Good ol' Ziploc bags, just like the desperate days while trucking! Have you ever tried doing that? Not an easy task, and not a fun thing to hold the bags under your kids. I had no choice though! The sewage was backing up into the bathtub!

But, at least Ziploc duty wasn't as bad as what Hyrum had to do. Since plumbers didn't want to tackle our nightmare, he had to go under the house and cut the line himself and have raw sewage dump down on him into a plastic container, but a lot spilled out everywhere. I won't go into details about that, but he had to bring the pipe in the house and run hot water in it...in the bathtub!!! The whole root of the problem was that a pair of tweezers (from the previous owners) had been flushed down the toilet and got caught in a 90 degree turn. Then, after using wonderfully soft, strong Charmin toilet paper, it (and all the stuff that flushes down with it) got piled up against the tweezers, and since Charmin is indestructible, it didn't ever break down and the whole mess froze up in layers.

In the end, Hyrum sacrificed himself for us and fixed the whole problem. We are now back to a normal, toilet-using family. I'll never take a toilet for granted again.