A Short Story About Plumbing

A short story about our plumbing: Not long after moving in our home 5 1/2 years ago, the plumbing backed up and flooded part of the downstairs. 

Plumber showed up- "probably tree roots, blah, blah blah. Use this stuff." We paid $$$. 

Plumbing backed up again, this time some other explanation,"blah blah blah." $$$. 

Backed up again. "Blah blah blah" $$$. 

The new, fully functional drain pipe.

My husband, Aaron tries to fix it himself but the drain snake isn't long enough. 

Plumber, "blah, blah, blah," $$$. 

Aaron decides enough is enough and buys an 80 FOOT drain snake. Clears the drain himself several times. 

Eventually surmises that the drain snake is clearing a blockage so far down the pipe that it is in the city's pipe. 

Call out the city- they decide, "Nope, it your problem." 

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. 

Had the city out a few more times. 

Had a few more plumbers. 

One plumber tells us the main drain pipe out of the house has a sag that is causing everything to back up. It will cost approximately $5000 to fix. 

This was last summer. We were way too overwhelmed with the symptoms Lyme Disease & treatment to deal with it. So we procrastinated. 

When he felt well enough a few weeks ago, Aaron started to dig out the pipe. We were planning on getting it done and trying to figure out how to do it inexpensively. We weren't sure how to meet those two goals, recognizing that Aaron operates at about 50% capacity most of the time. 

This morning- 71 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off, the city rang the door bell and informed us that we couldn't use our water because they were fixing their part of the sewer system. 

THE PART THEY HAVE SAID ALL ALONG WASN'T BROKEN AND INSISTED THAT IT WAS OUR PROBLEM!! Turns out their part (a concrete pipe) WAS TOTALLY CRUSHED so of course stuff eventually built up and backed up into the downstairs of our house. 

I'm guessing they won't be paying for us to remodel the downstairs bathroom. 

The story could stop here... I could just marinate in irritation that we dealt with the problem for 5 1/2 years and were about spend a ton of money on something that wouldn't fix the problem.

Or...

I can reframe, which is often called "Looking on the bright side." 

I prefer to use the term reframe because sometimes people get irritated when you tell them to look on the bright side.

So, the reframe for this situation that this is one time procrastination paid off and we don't have to scrape together $5000!

Cue celebration!  Now the time and energy we would have to devote to this problem can be devoted to something else.

Hopefully, that means we will finally build a tree house for my daughter, which is another thing that has been pending for 5 1/2 years!  

Now I can marinate in relief and excitement, which is so much better!