Lousy

Well bit by bit the building work is getting there and we now have a 'shower room' (i.e. a very small upstairs bathroom). This is VERY exciting.

Firstly there is a lock on the door so I can shut the toddler out and go about my business without him hanging on my leg sobbing. He may be on the other side of the door sobbing (and hammering) but at least I can't actually see him.

Secondly, it contains a heated-towel-rail, an item I have been hankering after ever since I achieved my previous 'great aim' of acquiring a giant pom pom (remind me to blog about the pom pom sometime). The heated-towel-rail is a sign that I have truly made it I feel.

Thirdly, it means that since moving house I've gone from having one toilet that doesn't really flush to having TWO toilets. That FLUSH. What with that and a heated-towel-rail I am clearly now moving on up.

Anyway, all this called for celebrating in the form of purchasing a new toilet brush and some towels that weren't actually the colour of 'ingrained dirt and possibly some mildew'. To guard against future discolourings, I went for brown.

So tonight (after a day which lets just say could have been better) I treated myself to a shower in my new shower room. I then plucked my new towels from my new heated-towel-rail (I'm just showing off now aren't I?) and gave myself a vigorous rub down.

I bent down to dry between my toes and...............



HOLY HELL.

There were little brown things scattered around my 'feminine area' (I have to be careful what I say here, having once offended a man to the point of him writing in when I mentioned wee - but I'm hoping you know what I'm talking about? You know, the area previously denuded in the Curious Incident of the Chemical Burns which has now returned to full bloom).

Gulp.

Now my son did recently have a letter home about an outbreak of nits at his school but I had NO idea nits were that brown or that big and surely there wouldn't be that many so quickly and, besides anything else, what on earth where they were doing 'down there'? I thought nits down there were called.......

Oh my god. No. Surely not? How on earth?

My mind raced. Maybe it wasn't lice? Maybe it was some other kind of infestation? I mean stranger things have happened (to me). Maybe the toddler had poured coffee granules into the laundry basket or a family of immature woodlice had relocated to the knicker draw?

I steeled myself for a closer look.

I plucked one for a closer examination.

I lay it under one of the (new) spotlights........








It was a piece of a fluff from the new brown towel.

Ah well - at least I hadn't raced off down the doctors and asked for a full examination of my crabs......

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On the postive side....

....amongst all the doom and gloom and chaos something wonderful happened today.

I went to the toilet and (wait for it).......




WAS ABLE TO FLUSH IT AFTERWARDS BY SIMPLY PUSHING DOWN A LEVER!

A small thing to most people but please bear in mind that it's been something like 7 weeks since I haven't had to fill the toilet cistern using a small jug and then put my hand to the bottom of it to pump a rod up and down (now now, no rude thoughts) and form a vacuum to make it flush. It get kind of tiresome after the 99th time.

This morning (unsurprisingly) I finally lost the plot and called a plumber. In fact by 9.30am I had called a plumber, the solicitor (twice), an estate agent, the removal company, my mother, a friend, another plumber, my mother (again) and my husband (just for good measure).

I didn't mange to get the house move off the ground (and breathe) but I did mange to get the toilet fixed.

Now I don't have a good track record with tradesmen and small children (anyone remember the poo on the carpet in front of the Virgin Engineer?) but I was hoping my luck had turned.

It hadn't.

The plumber arrived. He was about 22 and 'trendy'. I felt about 109 and decidedly un-trendy as I helped him wend his way through the Lego and discarded socks up to the filthy bathroom, littered with bath toys and constipation medication (not mine I hasten to add).

No sooner had I started giving him the Brief History of the Toilet in My House (a somewhat troubled history) then my eldest appeared and declared.........



'MUMMY! I NEED A POO! AND IT'S URGENT! IT'S HANGING OUT MY BOTTOM!'.

Where is that constipation when you need it?


The toddler is standing next to him. Crying.

The plumber is standing next to the toddler and looking, erm 'awkward'.

I didn't quite know what to do so I panicked and bellowed 'WHERE THE HELL IS YOUR PIG SEAT?' (if you haven't got small kids then a 'pig seat' is a sort of little padded seat that goes on the big toilet and stops small children falling down the big hole and drowning. The cheap one from Tescos is decorated with pigs - god knows why - thus 'the pig seat').

Pig seat was found (in the bath) and placed on the toilet. Pants were pulled down. Poos were dealt with. The toddler howled. The eldest described how the poo consisted of '3 nuggets' and therefore wasn't a 'big clearout'. The plumber stood in the doorway, facing outwards and trying to pretend he wasn't there. I faced the wall and closed my eyes and tried to pretend I wasn't there And then? Well then (for some god only knows reason) I turned to the plumber and said 'could I get you a cup of tea?'.

Funnily enough, he declined.

Sometime later when he came downstairs and asked to be paid the toddler hit him in the eye with the horsewhip (the horsewhip is now their second favourite toy, after the placenta). I blushed and said 'I don't know WHERE they got that from!'. Oh well - maybe he won't think it's all boring in suburbia.........

Anyway - another day done - another day with no good news on the house. Another day of excruciating embarrassment.

And my abiding thought?

NOBODY PAYS YOU FOR THIS.

Nobody.

I'm off to flush the toilet. Small things keep you happy.

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Toilet Troubles ('The Sequel' or is it even 'The Sequel of the Sequel'?)

Well I was up bright and early and stamping my feet outside M&S at 10am, banging on the door and waiting for it to open.

Why was this?

A desperate need for a pair of men's slippers?

An over enthusiastic urge to take advantage of the 'Dine in for £10' offer?

A hitherto unknown lust for a pair of flesh coloured support panties?

No.

I needed a poo.

And I had to go to M&S to do it.

Not your normal pooing venue I'm sure but, given the options, decidedly posher than Tesco's.

You see our toilet is broken.

This would be the same toilet that has blocked frequently (as noted on this blog) and has actually never flushed properly in the 8.5 years we have been living in this house (well you don't want to rush into these DIY jobs do you?).

Nobody outside of my immediate family can actually flush our toilet. There is something of a knack to it. A knack about as complex as translating the Koran into braille or building the Titanic out of matchsticks whilst blindfolded. It takes years of practice to perfect it.

People who know us and know our toilet don't even try and flush it. They only use the toilet if they have to and I then go up and deal with their offerings 'en masse'.

People who DON'T know about the toilet, disappear into my bathroom for circa 20 minutes until I realise they are STILL trying to flush the toilet and rescue them from their potential shame.

Anyway - as you might have gathered - we could live with this problem.

However, the cistern then started having trouble refilling after every flush. It would refill by means of one droplet of water every 2 minutes and thus take half the day to refill to a level where you could flush it again.

Having a toilet which you could flush twice a day wasn't ideal - however it was preferable to having a toilet which you couldn't flush at all and (just to add to the misery) leaked - which is what we have now after trying to get it fixed.

I friend of mine's dad is very handy and as he's staying locally we asked him to fix the toilet. Poor bloke - he had no idea what he was about to unleash.

He started working on it on Wednesday, has been back every day since, and it's still an ongoing saga - which has made 'tending to your daily business' interesting to say the least.

A friend asked me if we'd dug a latrine in the back garden yet.

My answer was no - not yet, but what with limits of Sunday opening hours and it being a Bank Holiday - never say never....... At quarter to 4 this afternoon I shall be doing my rounds and shouting 'does anyone need a poo? If so get to M&S now or forever hold your bowels.... Well until 10am tomorrow anyway'.

I think the moral of this tale is 'if it's not COMPLETELY broken (as in 100% unusable) don't even attempt to try and fix it'.

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When it all turns to custard on the home run

Also known as 'it ain't over until the fat lady sings'.

Parenting is one of those jobs where EVEN IF the day goes really well and you have oodles of fun and sit around supping home made ginger beer, eating organic humus sandwiches and patting yourself on the back for cruising through the day with nothing but a beautific smile and flour dusted apron (which, I may as well confess has never happened in this house) THINGS CAN ALL STILL GO TERRIBLY WRONG IN THE LAST HALF HOUR.

You know what it's like - the magical hour of bedtime is within grasp, everyone is happy and you are thinking 'YES! We are going to do this! Everyone is going to go to bed with happy memories of the day and I will be able able to go downstairs and open the wine! RESULT!'.

Yesterday looked like it was going to be one of those days. Everyone was happy. Everyone was well. Everyone had grown and developed through the day (well, they'd come out the other side without any obvious physical or mental scaring, which is always a big tick in my book) - until bath time.

We all trooped upstairs and I set the bath running and flushed the toilet.

And that's where is all went horribly, horribly, wrong.

Those of you that know me via Facebook may be aware that recently we had a toilet roll crisis and no toilet roll in the house for an entire day.

Anyway - we got toilet roll again but it would be appear that the toilet had become used to a 'paper free' diet and its guts rebelled against the invasion of loo roll by totally and utterly blocking.

Now I've written about our blocked toilet and using the baby's comfort blanket to unblock it before - but I'm telling you now - this was on another level entirely.

It was 'code red' (and brown, and every other colour contained in the bowels of the sewage system).

The poo-water was filling the toilet to the brim and running down the sides onto the floor and both children thought this was THE most fascinating thing EVER and came rushing in.

I started screaming - and I mean REALLY screaming. 'GET OUUUUUUT - NOOOOWW' and shoving them backwards.

Of course I scared them both half to death and turned them hysterical. I then had to shut them both in my bedroom which made them even more hysterical.

I'm then trying to unblock the toilet and stop the flow of water (I couldn't turn the water off at the mains because, for our house, this involves going out in the street and lifting up manhole covers - not something I really wanted to get involved in. Mind you I didn't want to get involved with several litres of poo-filled water either - but needs must).

So I'm running up and down trying to 'crisis manage' the situation and calm the children down with only the power of my voice (I couldn't touch them due to being contaminated).

The eldest child keeps opening the door and sobbing 'Mummeee, please, MUMMMEEEE, calm me down, CALM ME DOWN, I need a d-d-d-drink' and I'm going 'I CAN'T, LOOK AT ALL HIS POO! JUST GIVE ME 5 MINUTES!' - but he's not getting it and is crying so hard he can hardly breathe. He's begging me 'Mummmmeeeeeeee, DON'T BE CROSS!' and I'm saying (OK shouting) 'I'm not cross at you! It's the toilet - PLEASE JUST LET ME FIX THE TOILET OR ALL OF YOUR TOYS ARE GOING TO BE WASHED AWAY IN A TSUNAMI OF POO WATER'.

Luckily for him he's been studying a book about natural distasters - so the term tsuanmi was reasonably familiar.

However - my reassuring words did nothing to comfort him and he resorted to that age old favourite 'BUT WHY!?'.

At this stage the baby falls off the bed.

'WWAAAAAHHHHHH'.

He's moving and crying so doesn't appear to need an ambulance but I am so contaminated by poo water (it's soaked up the arms of my jumper) that I can not cuddle him in any way shape or form.

So they are both now hysterical and the hysteria of one is heightening the hysteria of the other.

It's like dual 'cry until you make yourself sick' marathon.

But I really can not help them at this point. Sorting myself out and getting them calmed down will take the best part of 20 minutes and by that point the poo water will have flooded the bathroom and flowed down the stairs.

It's a harsh call but when it comes to 'children so upset that they will never forget this day for as long they live 'vs' my entire house being contaminated by sewage' I went for emotionally scarring my children.

All the time that I'm weighing up the pros and cons of this decision, I am also wracking my brain as to what material could provide enough of a seal to create a good enough vacuum in the toilet (now that's multi-tasking for you!).

Ignoring the crying and the fact my heart feels like it's going to explode, I ram some sponges down the pipe.

BAD MOVE.

The sponges, funnily enough, just absorb about 9 litres of poo water and get stuck down the pipe.

Shit.

Literally.

Next try.

A teddy?

No - that is too harsh - even by my standards.

A tea towel?

OK that's better but I need to get my arms right down the pipe and I have no long rubber gloves. It will have to be Tesco's bags.

Great.

Oh. Not great. Tesco's bags have 2 little holes in the bottom.

I think I'm going to be sick.

So I'm in the bathroom with arms soaked in sewage, bits of poo filled sponge everywhere (it started to disintegrate), a tea towel which will never see the kitchen again and some very, very rank Tesco's bags.

Oh and 2 children who are by now almost being sick with hysterical crying and NO amount of calming words is going to stop them.

Another 10 minutes and vast amounts of bleach later I could cuddle them.

My eldest was holding in the baby in his arms and sobbing 'Mummee sniff isn't cross with us sniff, she's very cross at the t-t-t-toilet sniff and the p-p-p-poo'.

It took a long time to calm them down and everyone went to bed with a tear stained face and swollen eyes. Not what I had planned at all.

So there we are - don't count your chickens until everyone is asleep and the toilet has been flushed.

p.s If, god forbid, it should ever happen again I'm going to call Alan Sugar and he can send round The Apprentices. I'd like to see them try and do a better job - preferably with Margaret standing in the backround and raising her eyebrows in a knowing fashion.

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Toilet Troubles

2 small boys.

1 toilet.

2 minutes.

How much carnage can they cause?

Answer: too much.

The eldest was sat on the loo.

The youngest sat by him.

I went downstairs to get something.

I heard laughter.

I ran back upstairs.

1 entire loo roll unfurled and filling most of the bathroom (it is a very small bathroom).

'I. AM. NOT. HAPPY'.

'I didn't do it!'.

'NO BUT YOU WATCHED AND YOU LAUGHED AND THAT MAKES YOU PARTY TO THE CRIME'.

'But mummy, there wasn't a party! Just a loo roll going crazy'.

Que: the sound of ripping and tearing.

I spin round to see son no. 2 ripping up the bathroom floor tiles.

He is holding one up, like he's just found the Holy Grail, and grinning. A lot.

'Arrrrghhhhh'.

I try to shift him with my foot but he's got stuck to the floor glue (how come he's strong enough to rip a tile off but then glue his own body to the very same surface?).

I use my foot to try and lever him off (my hands are full of loo roll) which leads my eldest son to start wailing 'MUMMEEEE DON'T KICK THE BABY! STOP IT!'.

Great.

He's probably going to go to school and tell the teachers that the baby got glued to the floor and mummy kicked him.

Actually - gluing him to the floor might not be that poor an idea. Once he was freed he made a beeline for the burgular alarm wires and ripped several of them off the wall.

What does he think he is? Some kind of rock star?

If he chucks a TV out the window then that really will be it. I'll be sending him to rehab....

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Blockages

We only have one toilet in our house and a pretty rubbish toilet it is at that. As anybody who has had the honour of visiting me and using it will tell you, you have to pump the handle very hard and very fast to even get it to flush. I've lost count of the amount of visitors I've 'lost' up there. They go for a wee and 20 minutes later I can still here them frantically pumping and muttering under their breath.... Well at least I hope they are just trying to flush the toilet.... For the record - it's fine - your wee doesn't scare me. Just ask for help.

Anyway the toilet is pants and even when it does flush it has a nasty habit of getting blocked. Very blocked. This means it needs to be unblocked and, somehow, the job always falls to me. My OH usually runs very fast in the opposite direction muttering 'it's beyond all hope....you need to call a plumber' knowing that I can not be beaten by a toilet and will therefore fix it for him.

I used to use the toilet brush and just ram it down the u-bend and pump very hard and fast (god, there's a lot of pumping going on in this post) and that would usually do it. Then I got sick of the kids trying to paint the loo with the brush so I got rid of it and replaced it with one of those Toilet Duck plastic sticks with 'teeth' on the end that you use to grip a disposable cleaning pad.

Very posh. Very bloody useless at unblocking toilets.

So next time the toilet got blocked I stared down at the bare and barren plastic stick and realised I would need to improvise. I needed a large cloth the teeth could grip and I could use to create a vacuum. I looked around and my eyes fell upon the baby's comfort blanket....... Now before anybody calls Childline on his behalf - his comfort blanket is just a muslin cloth and he's got about 40 (or 39 now) so I didn't think it would damage him beyond all hope. And it worked a treat! Until he appeared at the toilet door and saw me ramming his (now poo covered) favourite blanket up and down the u-bend of the toilet.

"Ah ah ah ah" he sobbed.

"NO NO NO NO" I shouted - pushing him backwards with my foot as he reached for his beloved.

"AAAHHHHHH AHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHH" he wailed.

"NOOOOO" I screeched, actually pushing him backwards out of the room and locking the door.

A lot of tears, an Asda bag and a quick lob out the window later it was over - the toilet was clear, I was clean and the baby was (slightly) less traumatised.

So the next time it happened I thought twice before using his comfort blanket and reached for one of my OH's old t-shirts instead.

This also worked a treat until the t-shirt became jammed down the u-bend and snapped off the end of the stick.....

So I now had a toilet full to the brim with brown water and a large t-shirt jammed down the u-bend. Oh and no rubber gloves.....

Now would anybody like a cup of tea?

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