Borrowed Breath

Well, on Saturday night, we were making a baked french toast with apples dish for our breakfast/house church meeting at the McIntires. My job was to peel and core the apples, for which we have a handy little gadget that does both, leaving you with the core on the spikes and a pile of thin apples peels. Due to my inexperience with garbage disposals, I assumed that I could feed this waste through ours with running water. Everything worked fine…until about ten minutes later when we noticed that the sink was not draining.

So I took apart the traps and pipes under the sink between the garbage disposal and the sink and the wall, thinking that the peels were just stuck in one of the traps. I was wrong. It would not be the first time.

So I reassembled the traps and pipes and tried the plunger method. I plunged and plunged and plunged. But this also failed to dislodge our blockage.

Sunday we were running all day…house church in the morning and Michelle’s mom’s in the afternoon and her sister’s in the evening. Monday evening, we went out to dinner with Tim & Jen to celebrate Tim’s birthday.

On Tuesday, Michelle picked up a plumbing snake at Home Depot. That evening, I tried to dislodge the clogged up drain. I tried and tried, but I could not even get the snake to go down the right drain. It kept following the path of least resistance and poking through into our vanity drain in our laundry room/downstairs bathroom.

I prayed and tried again. Still nothing. I cursed in my head, which I think God sees as the same as cursing out loud. I tried plunging again. Nothing. Michelle went out and got some Drain-O. This also failed.

I went to bed, frustrated and annoyed at myself for my stupidity and at my inability to resolve my stupidity myself. I needed help.

So yesterday, Michelle set up an appointment with Roto-Rooter. And last night, very nice young man named Jemal came all the way from Delaware to help us out. He went at it for over an hour with his automated snake and finally broke through.

It only cost us [gulp] $315. Ouch!
I think that qualifies as money down the drain…literally.

But now we can use our sink again.

And there is a good chance that there was other build-up from the people who lived here before us. At least I tell myself that to try to justify the money we spent.