Clogged Drain, Clean Kitchen

Tonight I noticed that our kitchen sink is horribly, horribly backed up.  It's like a pasta eggshell soup that smells like death.  We have a garbage disposal system but it's hardly worth the effort of turning it and the water on.  It's the smallest one I've ever seen and it's way too small for a sink of this size with this much food going down it.

Normally, when this happens, my hubby is literally walking out the door for the evening and I get this idea that I'm going to fix it as soon as he's gone.  Well, the hubby did leave, and I took apart the whole sink pretty much.

My father was a general contractor and for 'day care' back in the '70's and '80's as well as for teenage torture and punishment, I was banished to my father's office a lot.  Especially in the summertime, you know, when everyone ELSE is at Disneyland or having fun with their grandparents or at the pool.  Yeah, I'm with my father helping with the important stuff like crawling under buildings, running electrical lines, remodeling old beautiful wood floors to their former natural beauty.  Oh yes, I did it all.

Child labor laws be damned, I was the assistant.  If I whined enough about going on a job (that smelled) or that included crawling into dark little spaces where things go bump in the night (rats), then I was relegated to the office duties and phones, which I became rather good at.

I recall many backed up toilets and kitchen sinks and watched time and time again how my father unplugged everything like it was so easy to do.  He just made everyone look so stupid as they watched and ooohed and ahhed at his magic.  Sometimes, he'd have to cut something or tear apart the sink pieces and replace something that was moldy or breaking apart.

Well, up til tonight, a sink has never been that much of a challenge for me.  I mean, I don't have that much upper body power, but I can eventually push through something.  Tonight, the damn sink won a round.  So, I'm sitting here, looking at my kitchen sink with the pieces cleaned and on the counter smelling it's victory.  And boy, does it reek.

This is the amazing thing - after I fought and fought this damn thing and finally realized it was a lost cause (it's probably the roots of the redwood trees in the system again) I realized the plumber guy needs to show up tomorrow.  Then I started to clean.  I mean, I've been 'the plumber guy's daughter' and have SEEN the houses that we had to show up and unplug things in.

Houses with so much junk and crap all over the carpet that there were trails where people walked in order to get around the house and mess.  No joke.  Smells that made you wonder if there was a body in the next room that was decomposing.  Cat litter collections.  Foods that never were taken out to the trash.  Ever.  These folks lived in filth most of the time.  I rather liked the houses we visited where the maid just left the premises and I was the one who felt like I might dirty up the place.  But it wasn't always so.

So what did I do tonight after securing a time to fix the drain?

Cleaned.

Freaking cleaned.

My kitchen and sink and drains and underneath the sink is SO CLEAN you could eat dinner off of it.  No joke.  It's gleaming, sparkling, so white, so pristine, so...yes, I do know that the plumber is going to make a hideous mess of it, but that's not the point.

Then I thought that when fixing a sink, sometimes you need another sink or toilet in the house to dump stuff into or check out.  So, I fixed up the bathroom.  Immaculate.   Then, I noticed my hubby's crap all over the stairway - clean stuff, folded, but it had to go too.  By this time I'm so tired that I close my bedroom door.  No need to get into that mess - and why would this guy be in my room to begin with???

Had to clean my son's room, of course.  I mean, that door never stays shut - it belongs to a child.  In and out.  Out and in.  Kids in and out, etc.

As I write this, I'm tired.  I'm drinking a beer and I'm tired with the stench of God only knows what coming from my pristine kitchen sink.  I laugh at myself tonight.  Truly, I do.  However, when the sink dude shows up in the morning, my house will be perfect and I can watch someone else's father fix my damn sink and think "really, that's all it was?"  Damn.