Tuesday, October 19, 2010

The Monday From H-E-Double Hockey Sticks

So our Monday started out like any other. The house was a mess, Neacel seemed to be in a mood and we had a few errands to run before Nick had to go study. We ran our errands, and Neacel wasn't that bad, apparently he just wanted out of the house for a while. We get home and Nick made lunch for Neacel, chicken nuggets and an apple. After the timer went off on the microwave, Nick opens it to see that one of the nuggets had caught on fire and was black. We laughed it off and had lunch.

Nick left around 1:30 to go to the library to catch up on some studying and to schedule his classes for next semester. Nap time is around 2, but I let Neacel stay up and watch his Caillou movie that he is obsessed with. While he watched his movie, I decided to tackle the giant mound of dishes in the sink. Not even half way through I realize the water isn't draining, so I hurry and put everything in the dishwasher and run the garbage disposal, water goes down, sink is now covered in a greasy mess and my left leg is giving out from standing there. I went to lay Neacel down around 2:30 because I was in much need of some curl up on the couch with a blanket and book quiet time. 3 rolls around, Neacel was still screaming in his room saying "I want up up" and I was taking deep breaths waiting for him to give into his overly tired feeling. I go into the kitchen for who knows what reason and find my sink in the process of overflowing....quickly I run the disposal again and it only gets on the counters a little bit, but still gross. I call maintenance, and tell them that this is the third time that its done this (once being Sunday while Nick was home, but not too bad of an overflow) The guy gets over here about 10 minutes later, and what do you know water is flowing down the sink just fine and nothing is coming up! We talk over Neacel still yelling at me and he tells me he has to run to the store to get some stuff to put down the drain. I'm thinking, I don't care what you do just fix the problem.

I go get Neacel and calm him down because an hour of screaming and crying over a nap isn't completely normal. He is acting 100% terrified and just wants to be held. So I sit in his room talking to him and calming him down, he is angry and completely worked up over something. I was in there for about an hour, just holding him like he was a newborn needing his mom. I laid him back down and the screaming starts right back up, this time with the troubled breathing that comes with crying a ton. So I carry him around the house with me waiting for the maintenance guy to return. I sit Neacel on the couch and turn on HGTV because I can't live without it and I'm now feeling completely stressed and still waiting for some "Me" time.

Maintenance shows up and he pours some goop down the sink and tells me to run hot water for 10 minutes down the drain in about 30 minutes, easy enough! He tells me then that this should fix the problem, which he is thinking is bacon grease covering a trap, and since we are hooked up with the 4 people above us, it could be anyone! BUT since we are the bottom floor we are going to be the ones who deal with the problems not anyone above us...thank you someone for putting grease down your drain, my Monday is just wonderful!

About 25 minutes later, Neacel is watching "Sarah's House" and drinking milk, but calm so who cares right? I walk into the kitchen, sink is about 5 seconds away from overflowing. I get everything off the counters and quickly try to stop it, nothing is working, and everything is just making it worse. Water is gushing out. I quickly call maintenance (which I might add is just a recording) and tell them that the sink is in the process of overflowing and to please get someone over here. I was told earlier that I don't want the counters to get wet...so I'm grabbing towels and everything else I can trying to stop the water. It's not stopping, so I quickly got to the point of I don't care, I'm not going to try and stop this. I go check on Neacel who is now asleep with pretzels in his hand, while sitting up. I lay him down on the couch and count that blessing.

Enjoy 2 pictures that I took while laughing and crying.

Its hard to tell but if you look at the top of the dishwasher you can see that there is water, unfortunately you can't see that it was pouring off the counter!


Long story short, after 2 hours,and 2 major MAJOR over flows later, Nick is home. Maintenance hasn't come back,I've called them 3 times letting them know that the kitchen was overflowing and water is pouring off my counters. Neacel is sleeping, I'm in tears because I'm exhausted, the kitchen counters have swelled (now I know why we didn't want the counters wet) cabinets have water in them, along with some drawers and I have a huge sterilite tub full of water because every time the sink starts to overflow I stand there rushing to put all this water in the tub. My stomach hurts, I'm stressed and angry, but Nick is home. He gladly makes us subs for dinner because the dishwasher can't hold anymore, and we are afraid to use the sink. I was afraid of using the stove because I can tell you that there is a good amount of water under that, along with all the bottom cabinets and dishwasher, because while I was mopping I could watch it run under there, and there was nothing I could do about it. I told Nick everything and even told him how at one point during the worse overflow I sat at the table in the dining room laughing and crying because I couldn't think of anything else to do at the time. Nick makes a call to maintenance, and I told him, its after 5 they are off for the night, no one is coming over, lets just pray that no one above us decides to do a large load of dishes or anything, because whenever someone else uses their sink, ours overflows!

Surprisingly, around 8 two guys show up ready to try and fix the problem. Unfortunately, they can't, so they put a cap on the pipe and tell us we can't use our sink till the other guys come over to fix it. Good thing its late and we don't need to use the sink for any reason. We try and laugh everything off, but at this point it's hard for me too. I'm tired, exhausted, stressed, and in a great amount of pain...37 weeks pregnant plus all of this chaos is just a cocktail for labor to start. Mine of course doesn't! We enjoy the rest of the night and put Neacel to bed, who I will quickly add was up till midnight playing in his room!

Nick is thrown for a loop with a horrible headache, I sat there trying to get him to go to bed, because HELLO it always works, and the last thing you want is to be in a bright room with the tv on, right? So he is in our bathroom getting ready for bed when I hear him say the toilet has now overflowed. Seriously? This is a joke right? It's 10:30 and I'm not mopping again. He assures me that he just flushed and it overflowed, we can't see why or anything. So he mops the floor and bleaches it. I'm in the other bathroom ringing out towels from our kitchen chaos so I can avoid them smelling any worse. He helps with the towels when he is done with mopping, each of them smelling horribly and full of food bits and what looks like a moldy greasy substance. We get everything cleaned and Nick has this bright idea of lets see if the toilet was a one time thing....he asked me if he should flush it again, I tell him I don't care but I'm not mopping or anything! I'm done for the night. This is what I hear *Flush* "No, no, NO, NO!" Followed by "Go down, go down....Mandy, the toilet overflowed again!" I couldn't help but to laugh! He then gets the opportunity to mop up the gross water and then bleach the floor. We finally make it to bed, bathroom smelling of bleach (which is to much for me right now), cap on the pipe in the kitchen, Neacel acting like a monkey, and I'm overly achy and have a hard time getting comfy. We were told maintenance would be here today (Tuesday), so I know that I'm getting up early because they could show up as early as 8, so I set my alarm, not happy about Monday, not happy at all!

So here we are Tuesday morning, its going on 10am. My alarm went off at 7am and Ive been up since then. I'm glad to say Neacel is just now waking up, but maintenance, who we were expecting early (because that's the way the other guys made it sound) still have not shown up. I could have slept in, I could still be laying in my warm, comfy, perfect queen size bed. Instead, I'm sitting in the cold living room, making as little noise as I can because I don't want Neacel to know I'm up yet, waiting for them to pound on the door while yelling maintenance....who wants to take a guess as to when they will actually show up? I'm going to play it safe and say sometime before 5pm so that I don't add anymore stress to this cocktail! Hope everyone enjoyed their Monday, I know looking back on it, I can't help but to laugh, I'm just hoping it wasn't a warning as to what is to come this week!

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