Moron Moment

This is a bit embarrassing, but it's one of those moments that you just don't forget and you just have to share. Please, no mocking comments.

I decided to get all nitty gritty today and scrub, and I mean SCRUB, my bathrooms. Mom-in-law is coming monday and I knew they were downright nasty and needed it before she comes. So I cranked up my jetted tub, removed the protective filter to let it get clean as well, poured in lots of bleach, and waited for the nasty black gunk to come spewing out. As I looked at this huge tub, then the blinds hanging over it, I thought to myself, "if I throw those blinds in with the jets on, they can get clean and no more dog hair and dust will be hanging off them." Brilliant! Kill two birds with one stone! I got Brian to remove the blinds from the bathroom and the kitchen windows. I put them in the tub, but quickly realized the jets alone will not get the dust off, hence I needed a towel to scrub them. Suddenly, the jets quit working. Hmmm, what was the deal? Too much grime and gunk? I walked into the kitchen and told Brian I had just broken the jets. They made noise, but no water would come out. Great, not good news when we just got bad news about our plumbing being corroded. I went back to the bathroom, removed my now clean blinds, and a thought hit me. Where was my towel? I know I was using it to clean the blinds and I didn't remember taking it out of the tub, but sometimes I'm forgetful that way. Uh oh!!! Was it possible? Could the towel have been SUCKED up by my filterless tub??? Yup, it can happen! So, we got down under the spider infested tub and tried to remove the immense drain nut that says "hand tighten only." Didn't come off. The kids needed flu shots today and the doctor is by Home Depot so we just stopped in and got a plumbers wrench. Still didn't work. We ended up cutting the pipe and lo and behold, there was my missing towel, all smooshed up in the pipe! Fortunately there is another filter at the end that kept it from going into the motor. Now we have a cut pipe on the tub and no way to fix it. So, off to Lowe's goes Brian. He got it put back together and now we just have to let it dry and make sure I didn't do any permanent damage.

Lesson learned: Never remove the filter on the jetted tub, it's there for a darn good reason! But in my defense, I have nice clean blinds now!
The cut pipe.

The culprit!