You can say many things about the Thompson household (and some have) but you can no longer say we are full of crap. Our septic tank has been pumped — apparently for the first time in 28 years.

When we bought the house last year from a couple who had lived in it since 2001 they said they thought the septic had been pumped in 1999, five years earlier. Prudence suggests pumping the system every 3-5 years so we scheduled service by Montgomery Septic.

Weather, and its role in preventing repair to damages to our driveway by the Moving Company From Hell, delayed the pumping time and time again. In the meantime, I talked with the folks who owned the house through the 1980s and 90s and discovered the system had not been pumped since the house was built in 1977. For reasons known only to God and the magic of septic disposal our system had not backed up but we held our breath until the magic day this week when the truck arrived.

But the drama was not yet over. Although our outside water faucets are supposed to back drain to prevent freezing, the one closest to the septic tank had froze over the winter and water spewed every which way while Amy scrambled to locate the water shutoff in the garage.

Then came the breathtaking (literally) moment when they uncapped the tank. They found the tank almost full of sludge and spent more than an hour pumping it out and cleaning. Everything else, thankfully, checked out.

“You got a good system here,” one of the pumpers said. “But man it was full.”

Not any more. Our septic is pumped and clean. And it will be pumped again in five — not 28 — years.