The Plunger Master

Have you ever had one of those moments where swear you can do something and then immediately afterwards the universe presents the opportunity to prove whether or not you can? Well last night Claudia and I swore to my husband that we could declog the bathtub on our own and it wasn't something that only he knew how to do. Of course today what gets clogged but the toilet! The universe couldn't throw us a bone and have the bathtub clog... oh no it had to be the toilet. At the time, Claudia was in the middle of cleaning the bathroom and I was on baby duty so the nasty task fell to her. Prior to last night, the first thing I would have done was call my husband or simply wait for him to come home from work to fix it but since I had just sworn that we could do it on our own we HAD to fix it without involving him.

I quickly jumped onto Google and looked up "How to unclog a toilet?" The first thing it advised was to use a plunger, no duh huh? But it said don't use one of those tiny cheap plastic plungers. Well as I am sure you guessed, that's the kind of plunger we have. Hey... they look prettier then the big wooden ones, right ladies? Therefore, our goal quickly became to obtain a better plunger. We were faced with only two options - we could change out of our pjs and go buy one or we could walk across the street and borrow one from a neighbor. We choose the lesser of two evils and borrowed one from our neighbor. Not something anyone wants to ask to borrow because it is inevitably followed by the question "how did you clog it?" Who wants to answer that question? And does anyone really want the answer to that question? I dont think so! So why was borrowing one a lesser of two evils then? Because by this point it was late afternoon and changing out of pjs was just not an option.

With our neighbors plunger in hand, Claudia went to work to declog our toilet. We first tried, liquid soap and boiling water. No success in declogging the toilet but it was getting very fresh and clean. In fact, it was getting so clean that it smelled like jasmine from the liquid soap. For over an hour, we tried all the little tricks that the Internet recommended... even the wire hanger trick. No luck. We had even plotted to not tell my husband when he came home from work about the clogged toilet but to just allow him to discover it on his own when he went potty. I know evil but you would have done the same thing. Don't lie...you know you would have. Finally, Claudia made a bet with the toilet that she was going to win and poured a crap load of vinegar down the drain. With a loud gurgle noise...we had success and she proclaimed herself the "plunger master."

With the toilet declogged, we were now faced with the nasty task of returning the plunger to our neighbors. If you have ever had the pleasure of returning a plunger to somone you understand the inevitable dillema that occurs. Do you return a plunger? If so, then do you wash it? Maybe wrap it up in a plastic bag? Or do you just buy them a new one? We went with washing it. Still not sure if that was the correct etiquette in returning a plunger but that's the one we went with.  As I am sure you can imagine the task was met with some strange looks from our neighbors, especially since they were out front chatting with more neighbors. Of course, the whole neighborhood had to know about our little situation.

After all said and done we proved that we can declog something without the help of my husband, we must buy a better plunger, and we were both a little afraid of being the first ones to use the toilet again!