Trouble Down Below

Today was even hotter than yesterday, but where did we spend it? On the beach at Lake Michigan? Strolling along the Riverwalk? No, we spent pretty much the entire day peering down a hole in the concrete floor of our basement.
Although this month celebrates three years since we bought our Naperville home, sometimes I feel like we just broke in. Even after all this time, we still have little idea about the complicated workings of an American home. Although Grumpy's inability at DIY it has been widely documented (by me); at least in England he had some knowledge of how plumbing and electrics were meant to work, even if he couldn't necessarily get them to do so himself.
Since Jett and his men moved out we've done very little, although to be fair I nearly took out an ad in the paper when Grumpy successfully replaced a faucet the other day.
It all started when I went down to the basement and found a pool of water on the floor. Grumpy knew exactly what to do. He peered down the hole and promptly slipped over on the wet floor.
"Call Jett," he said.
"We can't really use him as a handyman, anyhow, it's a holiday weekend," I said.
Grumpy picked himself up and rushed into action. He dashed round to the hardware store to buy a wet/dry vac while I did the other important job. Update my facebook status.
"I think it's the air conditioner," Grumpy said. "Call an air conditioning company then."
I found one gummed onto the side of the air conditioner, registered my problem and waited for the emergency guy to come round.
"Actually forget that, I think it's coming from underground."
I called to cancel the first guy and was about to call for a plumber when Grumpy decided to go for help. Within minutes Superneighbor (the one who carried my piano up the stairs you may recall) was on the scene.
"Oo, it looks like you're sewer is backed up," she said. "That's not just dirty water, it's sewage."
An hour or so later she had one of her friends round with a long bendy wiry thing poking down the hole. Unfortunately this achieved nothing, but we did learn it would be a really good idea to stop using the toilets, shower and any other water in the house. On her way home, she stopped to water my plants which shows a) was a Superneighbor she really is and b) that I really need to spend less time blogging or on Facebook.
At 4 p.m. the plumber arrived, which proves updating my Facebook status wasn't as silly as it sounds because a friend recommended a local company to me.
The good news was his emergency call out fee was less than the first guy's, but bad news because he's still here after nearly two hours and he charges by the hour. Good job my midwife never worked on that basis because the kids would have had to have dug their own way out.
So as I write this Grumpy is mopping up the floor and the plumber is still searching for the blockage. With all this consulting and confusion, perhaps we'd have been better to just call House.