Thread by @fuzzychimpcom

They say misery loves company, so here's a little story from #QuarantineLife. Feel free to have a laugh at our expense.

I got out of the shower at about 1:30 am last night. Let me tell you why that was amazing.

Yesterday, the floor drain was backing up into the basement. The drain is connected to the septic tank, so yeah, loads of fun.

I'm down in the basement, trying to snake the drain AGAIN. Twitter friends gave me the idea to use nitrile gloves, and I was staying nice and clean.

I ran that sucker way out the line. No luck. Did you know if you get a manual drain snake stuck and keep turning, it builds up force? Then, if you release the handle, it quickly unwinds in the opposite direction, spraying out whatever liquids happen to be on the coils?

I do.

About this time, my wife comes down. "The truck won't start." She helps her disabled dad every night somewhere between 9:30 and 10:30 before bed.

Take off the nitrile gloves, go look at the truck, and it's the battery most likely. We don't have another working vehicle.

She has to leave, I have to stay with our coronavirus homeschool kids, and I'm battling an invisible turd obstruction.

She asks the neighbor if she can borrow his car long enough to go help her dad. My neighbor's awesome, so yes.

My wife leaves and I take the cap off the septic tank. It is FILLED up into the neck of the tank. The problem is apparently down the line and the tank overflow is not able to drain. Great.

I have clean-outs down the line, buried, with a pop can so I can find them.

Did I mention it was raining? So I'm out in the rain, in the dark, with a metal detector looking for where I buried the stupid drain clean-outs.

I'm digging them out of the mud when my phone rings. It's my wife.

"I accidentally left the lights on (in the neighbor's car) when I went in to help my dad. Now the battery's dead."

I'm stuck. I've got the kids in the house and I'm stomping around in the mud in the rain. She's going to call her parents to get the car jumped.

"Call me back when you know what you're doing", I said.

A little bit more digging and I twist the clean-out cap off of the one in the middle of the yard. It was like I struck oil, only not.

The stuff that bubbled up out of that pipe and across my lawn…

As the "black gold" is gushing out of the pipe, my phone rings again. "I ended up calling your dad. He's coming over."

My dad is the best. He wouldn't hesitate to help, but he had to LOVE getting that call. It's almost midnight at this point.

He's also a little freaked out over the coronavirus (understandably). He has one of those temperature guns you use for checking for heat leaks in your house and stuff. He's been shooting it at your forehead when you enter his house.

So, yeah, probably pleased to leave the house.

The car battery was dead so my now bored wife was suddenly chatty. I like talking to my wife, but I said, "You don't understand. I'm outside, in the rain, actual crap is flowing out of the ground onto the yard and heading down towards the neighbor's yard." Yes, that neighbor.

I put my phone away (it needed a serious cleaning later). I'd had enough at this point. There were no nitrile gloves anymore.

I was in IT. Bare-handing that stupid snake down into a clean-out that was now 2-3 inches under the surface of the muck.

You know what you want to do after you've had your hands buried in last week's lunch? You want to take a shower. You know what you can't do when you can't run the water without raw sewage backing up into your basement? Take a shower.

I was committed at this point.

The last clean-out did the trick. Hallelujah! My wife was now home, safe and sound.

I'm hoping quarantine life improves from here, because last night was awful.

That 1:30 am shower though might have been the best shower of my life.

@threadreaderapp, please unroll.