life is crap

When I got home last night, I was ecstatic to see that Joe had not only mowed the lawn, but picked up our last door, which miraculously came in early (less miraculously, Lowe’s did not even know it was in and we would never have found out if Joe hadn’t stopped to remind them of our impending delivery date).

Briefly, life was good. Then Joe went into the bathroom. “Were you in here?” he called to me. “It stinks!”

“No, but thanks for asking,” I said. Then I did go in, but not for long. The stench was overpowering. But the room was immaculate. If Boo had an accident, she left no trace. I flipped on the fan and left.

We forgot about it until we were getting ready for bed. Incredibly, the smell was still there. We both started searching. Joe stopped when he got to the tub. “This is it,” he said. “Smell.” I knelt down and took a too-big whiff that was like inhaling a sewage plant. It knocked me back. I gagged. “Oh my god, what is it?”

What is obvious; the smell of human shit is pretty unmistakable. But why it is emanating from our brand new bathtub is a freaking mystery. Joe gave me a mini-lesson in plumbing, which introduced me to the fact that drains have something known as a trap, the bend in the pipe that keeps sewer gas from permeating your home.  Apparently, the one in our tub is not working.

Worst-case scenerio is that the pipes themselves are faulty, which would mean we’d need to tear up the entire bathroom (our only one, mind you). This is a thought too horrible to contemplate. Living with the constant stench of sewer gas might be preferable to trying to move the washer and dryer again.

Neither of us got much sleep.