A little after 9 p.m. last night, Bonnie came out of the bathroom and asked me if I had had any trouble with the toilet today because it wasn’t flushing properly. I hadn’t, but I noticed, about half an hour earlier, that the toilet in the front bathroom was very slow to drain. I didn’t think anything of it because I never use that bathroom, so I had no reference for how it normally drains.

At about 9:35 p.m., I used the toilet in our bathroom, and I saw what Bonnie was talking about. I tried plunging it with no success, so I went out front to check the sewer cleanout. It was overflowing. A river of toilet paper, shit, and noodles was pouring out of the three-inch pipe and flowing down our walkway to the street. For the first time in my life, I’m not using shit metaphorically. I literally mean shit. The shit that was lately in our assholes was now streaming down the walkway in front of our house. It was a truly harrowing sight to behold.

The line to the street clogged like this a few months back, only not to this degree. Last time, I shoved a garden hose down the hole and turned on the water as high as it could go, and the backed-up water drained immediately. That didn’t happen this time, though

I rammed the hose in and out a few times, and more shit and toilet paper was dislodged, but the water continued pouring out of the hole. After about ten minutes of ramming the hose in and out of the hole, the water level eventually dropped, and the pipes began to drain. Thank the fuck christ. I really don’t need another $500 plumbing bill right now.