Last week. Washing day. 5 loads of laundry and one load of nappies/diapers. Done, but an issue.
The downstairs toilet started bubbling. Then the laundry bubbles started coming up while the washing machine was running. Our house was renovated in the last 10 years and we’ve NEVER had a drainage / plumbing issue. Damn, I think – time to get the plumber in…
A few hours and a few hundred dollars later: plumber extracts stinky white mess from about 15m down the garden on the end of his spinning, whirring, metal machine. He examines stinky white mess and asks:
“Do you flush your nappy wipes down the loo?”….
Me: “No”… thinking, Aha! I’ve seen Grandma K do it once before, though she’s not here changing nappies that much, maybe she does though?
… Grandma K arrives and I accuse her (ever so nicely) of flushing the nappy wipes down the loo. She is adamant that she doesn’t and looks kinda miffed.
“It’s a mystery”, I think.
Your dad comes home that night and I tell him what happened, and the findings. Not seeking to blame anyone, genuinely perplexed. I start to question whether the liners we use in our cloth nappies/diapers could have been the cause. We use them to make it easier to dispose of the poopey nappies – cause they disintegrate and are designed for flushing, it just makes dealing with cloth nappies/diapers that little bit easier. Your dad, generally getting up with you first thing in the morning, generally gets the first exciting deposit of the day, which can be large and smelly.
Your Dad: “No, we can’t stop using those. They are fine. There is no problem with those. They are fine. We need to use those.”
Me: “Well, I just can’t think what else it could be.. I think I flushed a cleaning cloth down by mistake a few months ago, but you should have seen the amount of stuff that came out of the drain, it wasn’t just one cleaning cloth. I just don’t get it…”
About 30 seconds after I finish telling the story I look at his face. And I think it might be the dimples that give it away. And the lack of eye contact with me….
“Aha! Do you flush the wipes down the toilet????!!!”
Your dad: “Only when they are pooey!…. You know, I’m flushing the poo down and it’s easier to just put the wipes in too”…
Me: “Why in earth would you flush something down the toilet that isn’t soluble / is virtually indestructible?”
You dad: “I don’t know, I’m not a plumber.”
Me: “Worst excuse ever. You’re a lawyer. You have a degree. It doesn’t take a plumber to know that things that don’t break-up don’t go down the toilet.”
BAD PARENT OF THE DAY: DAD!
P.S. I think the plumbing bill should come out of your Dad’s allowance and I should get to spend a few hundred dollars on something nice for myself… 🙂
Hmmm…been there too – Shawn also has a degree, in IT, but also thought that it wouldn’t matter to flush the non- biodegradable wipes, after all “it’s only one or two”.
weird how the logic just seems to stop sometimes… maybe the smell of the poo just makes it hard to think straight.