what do you sacrifice to appease the gods of plumbing??

ok..
so after having already had my share of plumbing and flooding issues with my basement this past 2 months, apparently i still wasn't doing something right... Saturday I went down to the laundry room intending, oddly, to do some laundry... and discovered water, very rusty water, was all over the floor.. apparently my water heater (of unknown age - came with the house) had decided it had had it. it had rusted itself out apparently and i needed to get a replacement in a hurry.. joy...
anyway, I actually managed to get a replacement i could afford (which is hard right now with very little coming in, not much room in the budget right now for these sorts of surprises..) and had some family friends who were willing to give up a good chunk of their weekend (yes, even super bowl sunday) to come and install it for me.
all seemed to be going well. monday was fine.. tuesday was fine... then bam! today.. I had a job interview this morning (whole other topic.. temp agencies shouldn't leave you with the impression that your skills and experience are hopelessly out of date and useless just because you were lucky enough to be able to stay home and take care of your family for a few years.) and when I came back, I went down to finish washing up the towels we'd used to clean up after the water heater mess...
Only to discover that the septic had backed up all over the basement... joy. this has happened twice before. this past Christmas eve, and then once shortly after we moved in, so about march of 2006.. both times the line was snaked and "taken care of" though they were never sure what caused the problem. (I strongly suspect ice in the christmas incident..) This time, I called in a different plumber. He checked and said that there is some frost, and likely ice in the tank (given the weather lately, that isn't much surprise) and that may have some part in this. but he seemed pretty sure that he was able to clear the line. we ran water to make sure things were draining and they seemed to be in working order again.. hopefully they will stay that way for a long, long time as i am really getting tired of cleaning and drying out my basement...
not to mention i simply can't afford it anymore.. this keeps up i may just have to (joke here) torch the place and run away screaming into the night... (could never do that though.. all my books and muppety things are in the house.. not to mention my doggies..)

meanwhile, i'm left wondering what i've done to anger the gods of plumbing and what i need to so to appease them so they'll leave me alone for a while. and I'm off to buy new mop heads, big rubber gloves, and lots of bleach....