A lake I'd never swim in...

I love burning candles. I especially love the tart burners. I take great pride in my home smelling like pine or cranberries or lavender. White cotton, Cucumber-Melon, Vanilla sugar, Mmmmmmmm. Sometimes I think about if it's really healthy but especially when we have guests coming by, or it's a lazy weekend in, I just love having a wonderful smelling home.

But there's one scent I wouldn't buy. Sewage. And yet, that's what my home has smelled like lately. Lovely eh? No matter how many White Lily & Rose tarts or Citrus blend candles I burn it's always a la sewage. Doesn't cover it up at all. Just makes the first whiff a bit tolerable which is great for say the UPS guy but friends, relatives, and US - no. Doesn't help.

We've also been plagued with odd stomach viruses. So once we identified a possible sewage problem my brave dad went to the great down under and found something we were afraid of. A lake of sewage. *sigh*

So, we begged our plumber to come out ASAP and he did, today. He was 3 hours late and acted like he was 3 hours early but he's still a welcoming sight at this point. He's a very matter-of-fact, laid back, thoughtful (in action, not in words due to the matter-of-fact trait) guy. He walks into the house and asks, "Sewage problem?" I tell him we think so and he says, "Is that what I'm smelling?". I could think of a dozen wise ass answers at this point but the man is our only hope so I said we thought so. So, he goes down into the abyss with my father who's already down there. You really have to picture this next scenario so I'm giving it it's own paragraph.

My dad is germaphobic & a neat freak. It comes in handy at times but being under the house is not appealing to him, even without sewage. He's armed with lights, plastic, and a Lysol bottle in lieu of bug spray. He's wearing full body coveralls (thanks *L*, he LOVES those), socks over his jeans, boots, a long sleeve shirt over the coveralls, gloves, and a mask. And he's still freaked out. So he brings the plumber to the area where the lovely lake is. The plumber, bare handed, jeans, short sleeved shirt, casual as can be says it looks like sewage. As they ponder that the guy takes his BARE hand, puts it in the water waving it underneath. THen he scoops up some of the water, watches it run off and says, "yeah, there's definately some sewage in there".

YUCK! I think my dad wanted to hurl right then. But to him it's no big deal. That's kind of cool that the human species can adapt that well to their profession.

The good news is the leak is from our SINK in the kitchen, NOT sewage. A few months ago we had a sewage pipe repaired and the leftovers didn't dry up properly so when the new leak started a lake it stirred everything up. Lovely. I'm sure you all wanted to know this right? hehe

So, it was a-quittin' time for Mr. Laid Back but he's coming back bright and early. After some lime and replacing the cast iron old piping we should be good as new.

At least we found out why our heating bill was so high these past few months. Apparently the hot air was going through an unfinished vent and into the crawlspace. No wonder the cat liked being under the house so much!

I'm thinking about marketing a sewage scent tart candle, maybe plumbers would buy 'em. ;-)