A Plumbing Issue

We talk a great deal about the costs of therapy and education and therapists, etc.. In our experience, costs have sometimes been incurred for much more elemental matters.

I'm talking about.............plumbing.

Our old house---a lovely woodframe 1920s structure---had only one bathroom, on the second floor. When we moved into it some years ago, Charlie was still a fan of the Teletubbies, and of re-enacting the conclusion of the show, when the Tubbies wave "bye bye" and jump into the roof-hole of their Tubby house. It had apparently been observed by Charlie that there lurked a fixture in our household down which Teletubbies (he had plastic figurines of all four, and a stuffed NooNoo) could jump or be, well, immersed, and woe to the person (adults especially) who made this realization post facto. At one point, I became quite skilled in snaking my rubber-glove clad hand and arm into the furthest recesses of white porcelain, hoping that I must just reach a plastic Tubby (miraculously, I rescused LaaLaa successfully a few times) or a double Lego Dupo piece.

Said Lego I was, alas, not able to grasp and down the pipe it went. Or so I hoped, my mind visualizing whether the piece (it was rather big) would actually be able to make it down. While it apparently did so for some months, eventually its passage was hindered, with a resulting obstruction of the pipes, and the appearance of much of something in the laundry sink. A plumber was called and, after a short while, he produced the long-missing, and still green, Lego Dupo.

Each time, even as I was castigating Charlie, I was equally kicking myself for not being vigilant and for making an overly big deal about the whole thing in the first place. Those were moments when I'd remind myself, parenting comes with its......perks, and the parent of a child on the spectrum should be wary of "blaming" everything that happens on autism. Things happen, there are plenty of plumbers, and you pay the bill.

Monday we had a semi-extensive plumbing issue and, like an ingrained reaction, a litany of Things Dropped into the Toilet, from iPods to chew tubes, entered my mind. Charlie, who has grown out of Teletubbies, also knows full well what goes in there and what doesn't. Can't be, I said to myself, there's been no sticking stuff in the toilet for months, years.

Jim waited for the plumber and only called me at work to reveal the source of blockage, which had somehow come in via the roof and gotten itself into what turned out to be a sewage pipe.

The plumber said it was the first squirrel he'd seen in fifteen years, I was informed.

While thinking, what a way to go, I asked how Charlie on his final day of vacation was doing, and the report was good. He'd stood around nonchalantly when the plumber and his assistant came in, and walked past them to get a soda from the fridge, no big deal.

Things really do change.

Image from RotoRooter blog.