Not the New Year's that we planned

Our plan for New Year's Eve was to eat snacks, play some games, and see if we could stay up until midnight. W. and MC also thought they'd drop by for a while. We're all going about our day when a child goes to take a shower and discovers sewage had backed up into the downstairs bathtub. It's not great, but this has happened before and J. owns a long snake for running through the pipes. 

So he does that, and nothing. The drain is not opening and the contents of the bathtub are not going anywhere. The house was starting to smell... not so sweet. M. and WC decide that maybe they'll just stay home and invite us to come there if we want. 

After a trip to the home store, the drain is still not opening, so we decide to take W. and MC up on their offer. We go, we have snacks, we play games, and we have our toast at 11:00-ish so we can get home before midnight and throw more hay to the horses. Unsurprisingly the drain is still not opened, but the contents of the bathtub are a bit more bearable. 

On New Year's Day, J. makes another trip to the home store and buys a longer snake. It takes three people to maneuver through the pipes, but this time there seems to be progress. Until there wasn't. 

Very long story short, the drains are draining and the bathtub has been well scrubbed. J. is not entirely convinced everything is fine, but water can be freely used again and the house doesn't stink. I'll take it for the moment. 

This all somehow feels fitting. While there were some good things that happened in 2025, in general it won't go down as one of my favorite years. On top of the general s... ewage show that is our current government, we lost a horse, had more than three emergency vet visits, put in a new well pump, and had three very, very large car repairs. Any one of those would have been plenty, but all at once? It was just two much. 

So it's not surprising that 2025 tried to use its last day to create yet more chaos. We began 2026 just cleaning up the mess the previous year brought. I hope this is a good precedent. Cleaning up and getting things working again is never fun, but at least you're making positive progress. 

(And P. Family parents, it's probably a very good thing you couldn't come to stay over New Year's this year!)

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