Let me begin by saying that plumbing is almost a complete mystery to me. I know it can’t be that difficult, but I have a mental block when it comes to the routing of drains and the connectedness of pipes. I actually re-plumbed the guts of my toilet earlier this year, and I was so thrilled at my new domestic goddess-like achievement that I e-mailed all my friends to report what I’d done.
It can’t have been more than a month ago that one of my husband’s friends came over and discovered that our bathroom sink drain was largely dependent on the big plastic bucket we’d put underneath the trap to catch all the water that had been leaking from it. I’d fully intended to look online to see what it might take to re-do the drain…someday. Luckily our friend is a take-charge kind of guy. He returned over the weekend, accompanied me to the hardware store to make sure I got the correct materials, and put in a whole new drain in less than an hour. Lunch was the only payment he would accept.
Today I hosted an Easter brunch for seven people. I made deviled eggs, scrambled eggs, blueberry scones, honey-wheat bread, cheesecake, egg salad, bacon and sausage…a big feast. As is my usual custom, I ran most of the eggshells down the garbage disposal as I peeled the hard-boiled eggs. I probably grind up a dozen eggshells in the garbage disposal every week, along with all manner of vegetable matter, lemon peels, and anything else that seems okay. I don’t grind up potato peels in the garbage disposal anymore (there was an incident – don’t ask), but everything short of watermelon rind usually seems to go down fine. Until today.
As I began rinsing dishes for the post-meal cleanup, I realized that water was backing up into both kitchen sinks. This is very bad. There’s no way I’m going to call a plumber on Sunday, especially since I can’t really afford to have one stop by even during regular business hours. For some reason, I don’t own a plunger. I do own a big bottle of drain opener – I’m pretty sure it’s what caused my bathroom drain to begin to dissolve. Drain cleaner it was, then.
Since then, I’ve been alternating applications of drain cleaner with flushes of water that cause gouts of ground-up eggshell and vegetable fragments to float up the drain and into the sink where I can wipe them out each time the water subsides. I figure if I do this enough times, surely the clog will go away eventually. This is assuming that I’m not in fact resurrecting the last six months’ worth of ill-advised garbage disposal fodder.
So that’s where I stand right now. I can’t run the dishwasher, I can’t wash the pots and pans, and I’m not too sure how I’m going to manage to make dinner. If you happen to drive down the street and see a women washing dishes in her yard with a washtub and a hose, just pretend it’s nothing unusual, for my sake.
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