Linda and I had a good trick or treat turnout this year. I counted 54 kids. The kids started showing up about 6:00 PM and we finally turned off out porch light at about 9:00 PM. Our neighborhood must be pretty good for candy since the family who used to live next door and had moved away came back for treats. Our friends Alex and Alba who live about 20 minutes away brought Alex's boy Taylor around for a surprise visit. My sister brought my nephew Nick over early but we missed him. Sorry Kim.
Want to hear a real nightmare?
My Halloween nightmare really started on Saturday afternoon.
Linda and I bought a pumpkin on Thursday and I waited until Saturday to carve it. After finishing the carving I inspected my work. Linda and I both agreed that it came out looking good. The teeth and eyes are pumpkin seeds. I used a red magic marker to make the eyes red. I think that next year I will go with a scarier look. This pumpkin just looks to friendly.
I learned a valuable lesson while carving this years pumpkin. Never, ever, under any circumstances put the pumpkin innards down the disposal. In past years I dumped the guts in the trash but this time the trash was full, my hands sticky and the disposal inviting. As you probably guessed the slimy nasty pumpkin guts got clogged in the pipes and the kitchen sink started to fill up. Lucky for me, the toilets still flushed and the showers still drained. The clog caused my kitchen sink, one of the bathroom sinks and as I would find out later, the AC drain pipes all to back up.
Now being the handy guy I am I figured, hey, no problem. I pulled out my trusty pipe snake clog killer. This thing must be twenty feet long with a spiral hook on the end. I bailed out the kitchen sink and removed the trap then inserted the snake all the way thinking that no pumpkin clog will be able to stand up against the snake. I reinstalled the trap and ran the water only to have it back up again. I repeated this several times but no luck. I also have two plumbing cleanouts, one near the kitchen sink and one out behind the house. I tried both of those, again, without any luck.
Next I tried turning on the disposal side of the sink and stopping up the other side. This creates a pretty good amount of pressure even shooting water out of the sink all over the kitchen. I tried this for over an hour then the disposal heated up and popped its breaker. After that I decided to call it a night with hopes that the clog would clear itself magically overnight.
Sunday morning after a suitable amount of coffee I went back to work. I tried the disposal again. I didn't even consider the AC pipe to be a problem until Linda mentioned that our cat Skippy was freaking out about a water dripping noise in the AC closet. When I opened the AC door and found pumpkin guts coming up out of the AC drain I knew I was in deep do-do.
Now I think it's time to pull out my little wet vac. It holds about one gallon of liquid if I am lucky. I sucked pumpkin guts and nasty water out of the AC drain pipe for several hours. At this point Linda says she wants to go to Denny's and I agree if we can stop by Lowe's and look at big wet/dry shop vacs. We came home with a brand new 10 gallon shop vac. I continued to suck chunks of stuff that I am no longer sure is pumpkin but the clog wont break. Finally, I hatch an idea. My new wet vac has an option to reverse the air flow so it will blow out the hose instead of suck. I taped the sinks up with foil tape so the pipes would hold pressure then I turned on the vac. After a few minutes I unsealed the disposal side of the kitchen sink but found it was still clogged. I decided to try the vacume blower and the disposal at the same time and I finally had enough pressure to clear the clog.
There is an upside to this story. First, I did not have to call a plumber which I am sure would have cost me more than the $60 I paid for the new shop vac and of course I got a new shop vac.