Return to Son of Plumbing Hell

Well, to paraphrase an old Joni Mitchell song, I'm sitting here waiting for the plumber to show, I've been listening to the sirens and Pandora.com.

Actually, he's here. He's been here for a while. I knew we needed the plumber last night around 12:30 when I was calmly going to sleep in my hot room and young M started shouting in the bathroom. I put on a robe and went in there where it was immediately apparent that I needed more than a bathrobe to deal with this particular situation: to wit, the toilet had totally overflowed. Because misery loves company, the first pair of shorts I tried to put on were too small and this, combined with the knowledge that soon I would be wading in sewage, just seemed so unfair. However. I mopped up the sewage and bailed the toilet and plunged the toilet for a grand result of nothing but a soul drenched in anguish. Also, feet drenched in sewage. Therefore, I hustled up young M and a different pair of shoes and we went to the twenty four hour Ingles on Leicester Highway.

At first, walking through the cool and deserted aisles, I was unhappy and in a hurry but then it occurred to me that I was in an air conditioned clean and shiny place with working bathrooms and maybe we should just spend the night. Young M came to more or less the same conclusion around about the time he was sticking plungers to his stomach in the earnest search for the perfect one.
"Is there anything else we need?" I said, holding a 6 roll pack of paper towels and a gallon each of, respectively, Liquid Plum-R and bleach.
"Yes, Mom," he said seriously, the plunger on his stomach wobbling up and down, "A Danish. We need a Danish."

The Danish selection at Ingles at 1:30 in the morning is not as toothsome and delectable as one might wish. There are, however, lots of weird things on display like neon colored garlic bread and lumps of brown caulk that they're passing off as apple fritters. They also have wedding cakes at the Leicester Highway Ingles, by the way. Nothing would depress me more than getting my wedding cake at Ingles but, hey, since I am unlikely to ever order another wedding cake, what the hell do I know? We left the Ingles, where the cashier and security guard cast a sympathetic eye over our purchases (Entenmanns Raspberry Twist) and came on back to the hot and depressing bathroom, where I poured most of a gallon of Liquid Plum-R down the john (another word from my mother's generation, never used since!) and plunged with the new plunger, which did. . . nothing. So we gave up; I sent a sad email to my coworkers detailing my woes and remarking that I would be late at the best and went to bed.

This morning, the situation was unchanged. I tried plunging again for a while and then I flooded part of the bathroom again in a fit of joie de vivre and then I went to the West End Bakery to use their bathroom and buy a pumpkin chocolate chip muffin to console myself. I'm not sure what the association of baked breakfast treats and plumbing issues is (you'd think it would be a lot of cheese and meat, or maybe heroin) but apparently one exists. Then I called the landlord, who sent over the same plumber as last time. He's nice, this plumber, but he would appear to be approximately young M's age and he is very serious and dedicated. And stumped. He's walking around the house looking for some kind of mythical drain access. This isn't working for me - what I want here, I think, is a 60 year old overweight jolly plumber who's seen it all before. Or Super Mario.