Wednesday Adventures

Wednesday is Katie's favorite day of the week. Not coincidentally, it's my least favorite. We have both garbage collection and gardeners on Wednesdays. In a way, it's nice to get all the noise and commotion over with on the same day. But on the other hand, it's a lot to deal with. Not just the banging and screeching of the trash trucks or the ear-splitting buzz of the lawn mowers, or even the insanity-inducing drone of the leaf blowers. It's that Katie loves to watch the spectacle of all these strange people milling about. She drags me to the dining room windows and insists I open both of them so she can ooh and aah at the sights, sounds and smells of the lawn being mowed. Then, when that just isn't enough anymore, she drags me by the hand to put my shoes on, then pulls me outside so I can hold her on my hip while the garbage men do their thing. Did I mention we have three sets of garbage trucks: recycling, trash and compost? And that since we live on a cul-de-sac, each truck has to pull in forwards, collect the right side's trash, then back up, pull in again backwards, and collect the left side? It takes forever, and I'm so tired of watching it.

Katie, on the other hand, loves these guys so much that she blows them kisses and waves bye-bye when they leave. She's their #1 fan. The garbage guys beep their horns back at her (because they weren't making nearly enough noise to begin with, right?) Even when we pass a garbage truck while we're in the car, I start to hear "Muh! Muh!" I mentioned this to Anthony, who said, "Oh, great. She loves garbage men and gardeners, but when we take her to see the doctor, she screams her head off? She's gotta work on having higher standards!" I replied that if we could arrange a parade of doctors in front of our house once a week, I'm sure she'd love them too.

Yesterday was Wednesday. About 15 minutes after Anthony left for work, I realized I'd forgotten to take the garbage cans out to the curb. I left Katie to her own devices in the kitchen while I went into the back yard. After I took the cans out, I went back to the sliding glass door, where I could see Katie inside, reaching up and trying to open it. It's far too heavy for her, which is why I closed it - I didn't want her running into the street after me. Usually this is fine - I come back to the door, we make silly faces at each other through the glass, and then I open it and maneuver my way back inside before she can run out. But this time, it wouldn't open. I tried and tried, but I could see that somehow Katie had locked me out. And, even worse, she had no idea she'd done that and had no idea how to unlock it. I tried to coach her through it, but she was so angry that I was outside, where she wanted to be. She started to scream. I frantically tried to think. We don't have a spare key hidden. Our garage door doesn't have a code to unlock it from the outside. The front door is always locked. The windows are always locked. I couldn't think of anything but to call Anthony to make a U-turn and come let me back in the house. Unfortunately, traffic was horrible and he estimated it would take at least half an hour.

Finally I ended up prying the screen off of one of the kitchen windows, which was uncharacteristically and mercifully unlocked, and crawling in over the kitchen sink. WHEW!!! And Katie and I headed straight to Home Depot to have some spare keys made. Whilst there, I went and looked at the drain augurs for toilets. Not to overshare, but our toilet has been clogged for quite some time now. Not totally stopped, but slow. We tried plunging, pouring special enzymes down there, plunging some more, but nothing. I called a plumber and found out that it's a $150 minimum charge to even have someone come out to look at the toilet, and that the repair could cost up to $750. So I was pretty close to buying this toilet augur, which we'd probably use once. And then how/where do you store something that's been in your toilet??? EWWWW. Then I spied a nifty little gadget that's technically meant for sinks. It's kind of like a flattened piece of plastic barbed wire, with a handle on one end. You stick it down the drain, wiggle it around, and yank it back out. For $2.50 I thought I'd give it a shot.

When we got home, I heated up some water on the stove, grabbed some dish soap and rubber gloves, and headed upstairs. (I'd read online that hot water and dish soap can help to loosen things up.) I put on the gloves, did the soapy hot water treatment, stuck in my gadget, and VOILA! What should appear but a purple plastic baby spoon!  Gee, I wonder how THAT got in there. Weeks and weeks of plunging and worrying and nearly spending big bucks on a plumber! Needless to say, I'm ordering toilet locks from Amazon in another browser window right now. Gaaaaaaaaah!

Thank goodness Wednesday is over!