If kids are gross, then boys are downright disgusting!
Many years ago our bathtub drain became seriously clogged.
Nothing we tried fixed the problem, and that's saying something because Mr Bird can usually fix anything.
We tried the plunger, Drano, tearing it apart.
Mr Bird even resorted to using the snake.
All to no avail, the clog was too deep.
Our last resort was to break down and call the plumber.
I honestly couldn't tell you what the plumber did to that drain to pull that clog up, but he finally succeeded.
I do, however, remember some of what he pulled out.
A Hot Wheels car was to blame for the bulk of the problem.
Once the toy car went down, nothing could get past.
It grabbed on to every hair or piece of lint or tiny wad of paper that went down for probably weeks until we had the world's nastiest glob of disgustingness camped out in our drain.
I don't even know how they managed to get the car in there, it didn't look like it could possibly fit to the naked eye, yet down it went.
That plumber commented about our predicament.
He told us that boys like to shove things down drains.
He said that of all the calls he gets of homeowners with stuff shoved down the drain, 90% of the offenders are little boys.
They just naturally have a fascination for shoving things down the drain, go figure.
I'm sorry to say, that was not the last clogged drain due to boys in this house, far from it.
We've had so many things down the drains and toilets, it's unreal.
At least every few months I find a clogged toilet with the water dangerously close to the top, threatening to spill out at any given moment.
I can usually be found hysterically yelling at the offending water, as if by some small miracle the mere sound of my voice will calm the raging sea.
Once I get the immediate problem under control, I lock said bathroom door.
It's a know fact in this house that if the bathroom door is locked with no one in it, it's out of commission until daddy gets home to fix it.
The most flabbergasting thing to go down the toilet was a brand new roll of toilet paper, yup, the whole dang ding dong thing.
Some man child, who shall not be named, 'accidentally' dropped the roll in the pot and watched it swell, and swell and swell, until it soaked up nearly all the water in the john.
Then the genius thought the right answer would be to flush the evidence.
He flushed and flushed and when it still wouldn't go down, he flushed again.
I still can't believe how far down it ultimately got lodged!
Oh, the mess that one made, Mr Bird worked for hours on that one.
The bathroom sinks have had their fair share of the action as well.
At least quarterly the water runs so slow that Mr Bird finally breaks down and tears it apart to pull out the nasty, matted, smelly clog.
Usually that one is full of Lego's or hair pins or bits of left over sea monkey foam or just a huge ball of tangled girl hair.
This week the water in the sink did just that, it went down the drain hole as slow as molasses on a winter day.
After the kids brushed their teeth for school yesterday morning Beano came down stairs with a very peculiar item he pulled up from the drain.
Turns out whatever went down was starting to come back up!
We inspected the thing and were horrified that it was growing, it was a small sprout of some sort.
At first glance I thought maybe an apple seed went down and decided to start to grow.
It had roots and a pale stem and a little green shoot coming off the top.
Whatever it was, it had been growing in there for quite a while.
Upon further investigation, I noticed more of the small plants, their tips just below the lip of the drain, just out of my reach.
Many apple seeds?!?!
To tell the truth I was a little scared of what I might find, so I didn't try too hard to get at them.
That's what Mr Bird is for, right?
Ever my knight in shining armor!
Without disappointment Mr Bird grumblingly went to work on his mini drain garden.
And this is what he found:
A small forest of wheat grass.
I can just see some child (none of whom are taking credit for this one) going to the huge wheat bucket in the pantry and grabbing a small fist full, spilling some down the drain.
What I want to know is, what's so fascinating about wheat berries that they would even want to haul them, around?
They don't taste very good like that, after all.
I prefer them all ground up into nice warm flour and turned into a soft loaf of fragrant homemade bread, still warm with an inch of melted butter.
But hey, whatever floats your boat!
...or wheat grass
