Respout

When I remodeled the entire east side of the house three years ago, the plumber I hired to put in the new tub knocked the spout from the old tub down the exposed drain hole for the toilet causing the plumbing to back up. I thought it was the septic tank, but when the Roto Rooter guy came out he said, "I think you need to see this," and showed me the tub spout caught in the 'clean out' pipe in the front of the house. You can imagine the conversation with the plumbing company. Then they came out to "investigate," followed a couple of days later by a conversation that involved them telling me that they had me and the handyman on tape saying that we did it. Then I lost my freaking marbles and screamed, "You taped me in my house without my permission!? I'll speak to you after I've talked to my lawyer!!" There then ensued a frantic and emotional phone call to my lawyer who was none to excited to discuss with someone so obviously distraught and unhinged the legalities of recording someone without their permission because he was probably dealing with trying to keep someone out of jail. Hysterical is too calm to describe my state and I was in no mood to hear the requisite, "Well, I don't...depends...." and I peppered the conversation emphatically with all of my various legal knowledge gleaned from eight years of sitting through Mock Trial practice, including the hysterical and violent declaration, "I know it's not legal! I have an expectation of privacy in my own home! There was a pretrial motion about that, Dad! I KNOW THERE WAS!" To which the Big Guy said he would look into it and get back to me. It was pretty clear after two weeks of daily calls to my legal team that you get what you pay for as far as legal advice and I was going to need to pay for some legal counsel if I expected to get anywhere with my wrongful tub spout lawsuit. After some months of constant pestering, my legal dream team was able to come up with some rulings that did in fact show that there is an expectation of privacy in your own home and the I'm-exhausted-from-hearing-about-it advice that probably the plumber should not have taped me, but I was most likely not going to be able to get them to pay to get the damn tub spout out, nor recoup the money I paid to have the tub put in.

I bring this all up because the toilet backed up last night and despite using my super homeowner skills and my dad's 'snake' that I've never given back, I was unable to get the toilet fixed and had to call Bill's rooter guy to come out today. He was able to unclog the toilet fairly quickly, but he said, "There's something stuck in here." I knew right away what it was. He didn't believe me, because, well it's a physics miracle that the spout made it from the bathroom down to the clean out without getting stuck and who has a tub spout in their septic line? I don't even have kids to blame. He was my hero and dug down and used his expert skills to get it out, but not before I got many lectures on the appropriate strength of toilet paper to buy when you have a septic tank and an old toilet. (It's not Cottonnelle.)