Thursday, November 25, 2010

Everything but the Kitchen Sink

I'm hosting Thanksgiving this year. I love hosting anything, period. And I'm the type of host, drink in hand, that is ready 30 minutes before you walk through the door. Its the day before Thanksgiving and I am ready, or I was on my way to being ready. The table is set, the flowers are arranged, the sides are prepped, and the turkeys are chilling. I have everything, but the kitchen sink. My kitchen sink stopped functioning.

In the middle of the afternoon today while preparing the sweet potatoes and corn bread, the sink stopped draining. I immediately texted my husband, "Who should I call?". His response was, "I'll come home early and fix it". An hour later, as the pile of dirty pots and pans was increasing and the standing water level in the sink was not decreasing, I texted him again with my fear that we might need to call someone else and its the night before a big holiday. I was met with, "I'll come home now". He came home from work early, but 8 hours later I was still facing the very real possibility of hosting Thanksgiving without a kitchen sink.

My husband is pretty handy. For a business minded, computer nerd, he handles most of our simple carpentry, electrical, and plumbing work around our house. We don't call "people" to fix things until my husband has at least tried first. And he's very good at fixing things, most of the time. But, there are the occasions where my husband has been known to cause a bigger problem while trying to fix a smaller one. Tonight he took apart the kitchen sink pipes and found a clog much lower in the system than he could get to. We did call a drain professional who came out in the evening to snake the drain and it seemed that the problem was solved. But when my husband put the pipes back together they started leaking under the sink. Apparently when my husband was "diagnosing" the original problem, he "may" have put a hole in a pipe. Let me just say this is not the first time he has unintentionally put a hole in a water pipe. But tonight there are no stores open for parts for him to replace the pipe, and they won't be open again until after the holiday. He just threw a plumbers wrench in my plans for being calm and prepared for Thanksgiving.

At midnight, after much arguing about who I really should have called this afternoon (he still maintains he was the right call), he finally informed me that the sink is "functional". Functional, meaning that I can use it, but the pipes are held together with plumbers putty and there is a mixing bowl and bath towel under the sink. We just need it to hold until after dinner and hopefully it will. I had no idea this morning that what I would be most thankful for this holiday is a working kitchen sink, but its officially Thanksgiving and I am.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.