Full-time Stylist, Part-time Plumber

Y’all. I truly thought my “full-time stylist, part-time plumber” days were over.

I thought incorrectly.

Now this post is probably not going to be as humorous to you as it is to me. Reminds me of when I was a kid and I first learned what a “location joke” is. You know, the “you’d have to have been there for you to think it was funny” kind of thing. I’m pretty sure this story is one of those. My apologies if you make it through and still feel that way.

I think y’all know My Ron and I moved the beauty parlor to a new location where we have more space, more amenities, and fewer responsibilities – and all that held true until last week.

There was a shift in the beauty parlor universe.

I was minding my own beeswax in the break room, probably eating some high-carb low-nutrition snack, when I heard My Ron call me from the shampoo room. No telling what he wants so I was kind of taking my time. But then he called me a second time, and then a third, with increasing intensity and volume. I replied with a quickened pace and when I rounded the corner into washbowl heaven, my eyes beheld the funniest sight I’d seen in awhile.

My Ron had done a perm that morning and, as we do, had all the used perm rods in the shampoo bowl to wash them off. When I walked in, he was standing a half-step away from the shampoo bowl, as if he were in mid-movement and got stuck, with both hands in the bowl, all the perm rods scooped up the side of the bowl beneath his hands. All, that is, except the four that went down the drain.

He was half laughing, half exasperated, half panicked, (yes, I know that’s three halves) (but he was) and blurted out, “I was scooping out the perm rods and I scooped up the little basket in the bottom of the sink and some of the rods went down the drain! I can’t move because every time I do more perm rods escape and go down the drain! Come help me!”

Lord help.

I was laughing. Not at him, of course. Definitely with him.

I dutifully grabbed the little metal basket that belongs in the bottom of the shampoo bowl and put it back in its proper place and we continued to scoop all the perm rods out of the sink and safely on to a towel. We were both laughing and then the reality came back on us – there were perm rods down the drain.

Good thing I’m a part-time plumber.

At this new beauty parlor the shampoo bowl setup is a bit different than what we had before, so it was time to explore the underbelly of this fancy dancy apparatus and learn something new. And boy did I. If you’ve ever had the great fortune to look under a sink, any sink, you know that, usually, attached to the bottom of the sink is a PVC pipe coming straight down, attached to a p-trap attached to a pipe that goes to the great beyond. Yeah, so this ain’t that. No, our fancy dancy sink has a hose attached to the bottom of the sink which runs out of the sink cabinet to the wall cabinet, through a hole and into the cabinet to meet the PVC p-trap doodah to the great beyond.

I’ve never seen anything like it.

Thank the Lord there IS a p-trap, though. That’s really all that matters. The perm rods are too large to make their way through it, so at least there’s that. There’s actually hope for retrieving them and having a free-flowing beauty parlor experience. Or something like that.

I pulled the hose out of the p-trap and blessed behold, as Reva would say, sitting at the entrance to the trap was a purple perm rod. We hollered. I plucked it out and stuck the hose back in its place. Ron assured me there were more, though, so I told him to turn the water on full blast and shove them on through. So he did, and they did, and I did get them out one by one and once again all was well in the beautysphere. But ya gotta know, this setup has me some kind of contorted. On my knees, head stuck through the cabinet trap door, one shoulder in, one shoulder out, cellphone flashlight illuminating someplace my head really wasn’t designed to be in the first place.

How do I get myself into these situations?!?!

We get everything put back together, shoved back into the correct place, looking like it never happened. Didn’t even have to tell the landlord, and I learned something new to boot. All in all, it was an ok experience. We were done.

Or so we thought, as we were, in fact, not done.

All of that happened on a Tuesday or Wednesday, maybe, and we plowed on through the week. Started the next week off with a bang, and all was well on the flat earth until the next Thursday. The tides turned. The gravitational pull was off. Maybe it was full moon. I don’t know. What I did know was that the shampoo bowl was no longer draining at the speed in which it was designed. Houston, we have a problem.

The first couple of times it happened, I chose denial. After that, I chose grunting and choice words. Then I chose action. The three steps to putting my plumbing pants back on, just in case you need them for future reference. I told My Ron we once again had an issue, and he may have gone through the three steps himself. Once again I found myself shoes off, on my knees, head in the cabinet, cellphone flashlight at max capacity, and butt crack on full display, metaphorically speaking, of course.

But something was more off than before and the mystery was bigger. There was no perm rod in the p-trap, no wad of hair, no nothing to be causing a backup. Hhmmmm. So I began shining the light up the tube and BLESSED BEHOLD, AS REVA WOULD SAY, there was a perm rod stuck up in there.

Way up in there.

You see, the hose apparently wasn’t long enough to reach from the sink to the p-trap, so there was some splicin’ goin’ on. An extra length of hose was added with a joint piece and glue and compression rings and probably some voodoo. And that’s where this +#-$-@+  perm rod was stuck. Well dang, now I gotta find something long enough and stiff enough to shove up in there and dislodge the rod and try removal once again. This all just sounds bad, doesn’t it? But, I digress. I wandered the beauty parlor looking for something, anything that would work. Hot dang, got it! The metal spout off of my watering can comes off and is the perfect length. So I shoved it up in there and dislodged the rod. Shook the hose around some, put it all back together and turned on the water full blast.

No bueno

It got stuck again. I did this a couple of times with same success, or lack thereof. Time to throw in the towel on this attempt. But I’m not done. Oohhhh no, I’m not done.

My Ron and I discussed our next move. He volunteered that he has a drain snake at home and he would bring it in tomorrow. Excellent. Just what we need. Semi-professional tools. Not to be confused with the definitely-not-professional-tools with which I normally work. Hey, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right? So we put everything back together and anxiously awaited the next day.

And that day came, and so did the drain snake to the beauty parlor, and so did, finally, the time to implement. Mind you, I generally do these things when no one is around or available to help. And by “no one” I definitely mean My Ron. So I found a ten minute pocket and got busy. One more time pulling out the sink cabinet, stretching the hose, sticking my head into the cabinet and disconnecting the hose from the p-trap. It becomes quicker and easier each time. Grabbed the snake and began shoving it up the hose backwards. I felt it grab the perm rod and I pushed until that purple perm rod came up through the bottom of the shampoo bowl. I hollered for Ron; if I gotta see the success, albeit covered in hair, he’s gotta see it, too.

He may have gagged a little when he saw the hair stringing from it, but he muscled up and removed it from the drain snake and chunked it into the trash can. Some things just should not be salvaged.

All was, once again, well with the world.

And that lasted about nine-point-two seconds.

Ron went back to his clients and I was left alone in the shampoo room to put the scene of the crime back to its original non-crime-scene scene. I began to pull the snake out of the tube, and was thinking about how I was finally done with this and there was absolutely nothing left in the tube, and that’s when I should have just stopped thinking. Because there was something, in fact, stuck in the tube. The drain snake. Yep. Hung up. Snagged. Stuck. Hooked. Ain’t. Comin’. Out.

Seriously?!?!?!

I pushed. Wouldn’t budge. I pulled. Wouldn’t budge. I wiggled. Stuck. I jiggled. Stuck.

Good grief in the morning.

So I stopped, took a good few deep breaths, glared at it, maybe said a word like dadgummit, and reevaluated. I accordioned up the tube, stretched out the tube, accordioned it again, said the rosary, threw a hail Mary, and maybe shed a tear, and praise be, it finally turned aloose. I got the snake out, put the contraption back together, cleaned up, pried myself up off the floor, put on my shoes, shoved the sink back against the cabinet, ran the water for good measure, and walked away. My work here is done.

To say there’s never a dull moment at the beauty parlor is such a gross understatement, but we’d have it no other way. The people, the adventures, the things you’d never plan for in a million years; every bit of it makes for a fabulous life. I wouldn’t trade any of it, and I wouldn’t trade my plumber’s butt pants either. Thanks, Daddy, for making me hold the flashlight when I was a kid – you taught me invaluable lessons. And thanks to My Ron for giving me the opportunity to implement those lessons – you always keep me on my toes, and even moreso, keep me laughing.

Hopefully, at least for a little while, I can hang up my part-time plumber hat and not have to stick my head in that cabinet. My hairdo can’t take much more of that. 😉