Clogged.

I stopped an intruder breaking into our home over the weekend. The good news is it all went down while the kids were gone.

For the past 4 days, we'd been dealing with a clogged toilet. Because I'm stubborn, proud and too lazy to call a plumber, I kept working on it myself. Plunger. Roto Rooter. Hot Water. Some stupid "green" solution using kitchen items. I had tried it all and nothing was working.

I finally broke down and borrowed my dad's plunger, which is better than mine. Yeah, I know, aren't all plungers created equally?

I also borrowed his snake. A disgusting and annoying tool of plumbers everywhere that's a lot like that weird thing they do in medical dramas when they jam the tube down somebody's throat. And let's also establish the truth that I don't like anything with the word snake in it. Except maybe Whitesnake. But other than that snake brings nothing redeeming or encouraging to my mind.

If I'm being honest and I'd like to think I am, snaking a toilet is just about as awful a task as I've had to do as a home owner. It's like playing the disgust-o lottery. You are gambling on what will turn up and the odds of getting a prize you actually want is pretty much slim. What could you possibly find deep in the pipes of your toilet that you want? And yet you hope every time you do it that something does turn up since your toilet is broken.

As a sidelight, if you ever find yourself snaking a toilet make sure its not rusty and sharp like my dads. Otherwise you will end up scraping the inside of your toilet like crazy leaving it unclogged but looking worse than ever. Not that it happened to me mind you. Not saying I'm now researching how to restore the ceramic finish on the inside of my toilet bowl. But I could be.

So off I go "snaking my toilet" or in other words, wasting a perfectly good Sunday night when my kids are gone. And much to my dismay I learn that doing this particular task is something that must require a class or an apprenticeship because I can't seem to make any progress.

I finally begin to succeed when I encounter a stopping point. According to my extensive online research this is good news and may be moment of breakthrough. I find this both encouraging and terrifying.

So off I go, cranking clockwise. It's kind of like fishing except instead of an amazing Salmon or Steelhead out of the Deschutes River in Eastern Oregon I'm trying to pull something out of my toilet. It's like River Monsters meets Dirty Jobs.

And then it happens.

The water changes color a bit. Turns out that's the rust off the snake. But I see something in the shallow, murky, cold water. But in this significant moment of breakthrough I reach right in.

Since I've had time to reflect I realize this was stupid. In this case it worked out but I feel as though any time I would do this for the rest of my life it will not work out as well.

And that's when I found the intruder. Trying to sneak his way into our home and swipe all the things we love. It's a plastic Swiper toy from Dora the Explorer.

And he has this annoying grin on his face.

The next day I asked the kids about our masked toilet clogger. Turns out they were well aware he was in there. For the sake of time I won't record the dialogue that happened after that. Let's just say it involved a number of questions from me met with blank stares and shoulder shrugging from the kids.

Based on my interrogation though it sounds as though Swiper was working alone.

I've since returned my dad's snake and his vastly superior but unnecessary plunger. And it seems as though things are once again working as they should. Now to fix all those scratches.