Saturday, May 20, 2023

Expensive days

 Damn, this week was spendy.  


        I'm healing up nicely. Bandages are off, and the dissolving stitches in my mug are falling out. 5 more days and I can get the rest of them in my back pulled off too. 

    So, with Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife's mother in declining health, I booked us all tickets to go see her, likely for the last time this side of eternity,  in her remote city in northeastern Brazil.  I got a good deal on travel, costing just north of 3 grand for airfare. Hotel, etc is still in the air. Paying for chemo to buy her a little time isn't as steep as it is here in the US, but it still ain't fun. 

  The same afternoon? After a thunderstorm, I see water running out of the fascia boards in the corner of my roof where it overhangs by some front windows.  So, thankfully, while I have a roof leak I have no damage to my home's interior. I have a concrete tile roof, this being Florida, and the $2500 repair bill was unpleasant after dropping 3k the day before.  And while the roofers are swapping out tiles (a couple of them were cracked, being older), the sink in the kitchen clogs.  Argh. OK, being the proud owner of a penis, I obviously have a pipe snake, and after pulling the water trap from the sink, I fail to find a block so much as I'm pushing through some resistance the whole damn way as I work my way out to the street with the snake... and pulling the snake back, I'm getting some sulfur-laden grease... about 15 damn feet of it. 

 I poked a hole with the snake through a grease clog. So I start going all ham with the snake, trying to ream it out enough to get a large mass flow of water through. Boiling water and a strong alcohol or alkaline solution will eat away at a fatberg in the pipes after all.  But nope, I can't get the snake to ream out a big enough hole to let out more than a trickle of water.  Gotta swallow my ego and call a plumber. 

 And maybe I got taken for a ride, but maybe not, but the plumber agreed with me that I had a grease issue, and after trying and failing to clear it with a bigger, better snake, I agreed to pay $1500 to have the pipe jetted out all the way from the sewer connection to the sink. 

   So, yeah, the fam is having hot dogs and some of my older canned goods from my preps for a little while. Daddy's had a pricy week. 


 Still, shit, family is family, and my home is important too. I can be sad that it was an expensive week, but it's not like I had other options. Thing about money is that I can always make more.  I'm grateful I have my job to go back to in just a few days and despite being less pretty than I was 2 weeks ago, I have health enough to earn and a couple more days to relax before I head back to work. 

    This crew change is going to be different, too.  My kid and I are both flying out on the same day to meet our vessels for the first time. I'll be able to take him to one of my favorite eateries in Brooklyn the night before crew change. 




3 comments:

JC said...

Consider putting a clean-out fitting about halfway down the waste water line. You can NEVER have too many clean-outs. The 'cleanout wye' is your friend here, you can send the snake in either direction. This is particularly helpful in a vent stack blockage.

Don McCollor said...

Hausepiper, yes sewer plugs are evil. Before calling Roto-Rooter and after the snake treatment, I would try a poor man's water jet. A cheap (stiff) garden hose snaked down from an access into the sewer as far as possible. Then turn the hot water on and slowly withdraw the hose. Worked sometimes (or at least postponed the inevitable).

Rob said...

Flying out with your son to both be picking up different ships is one of those priceless deals, having enough coin on hand to fix the house AND go see the Mother in law at this time in her life is.... just good!