giveaway

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Sunday Randomosity: To Do Lists and Birthday Plans Edition

This snow person has nothing to do with anything, but I found it on a walk recently and it is a real vibe.

A person can both Not Really Want, At All sweeping romantic gestures and glittery jewelry and giant bouquets of flowers and fancy heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, while still feeling a little disappointed to then not get those things. It is illogical, but such is the human heart. This past Valentine’s Day, I managed to override whatever part of my system feels sad and melancholy over not having the Hallmark Version of the holiday, and instead feel pleased about a) sending Valentines (although they ALL seemed to reach their recipients MUCH TOO LATE; note to self, start MUCH EARLIER) and b) making cookies and c) delivering said cookies to a few dear local friends and d) buying flowers for myself and e) supporting Carla in her desire to paper the house with hearts. It worked, truly, and I felt pleased and cheerful rather than resentful and pouty. 

Today: I bought myself some yellow tulips that I am hoping will open up as the day goes on. I do love a cheery yellow tulip. I am making vanilla cupcakes with lemon curd filling and cream cheese frosting because, as Engie noted, why would I pass up a perfectly good opportunity for a baked good?! Also, I am using boxed cake mix because the cupcakes always turn out better than homemade, PLUS they are easier. I am also making tacos for dinner and I am going to have a GIANT MARGARITA, maybe two! with the tacos. Probably not three, because I do need to wake up tomorrow to take Carla to school, but we’ll see where the night takes us. I don’t plan on doing a single dish, although that means I may have extra dishes tomorrow, but that’s okay! It is worth it! (We’ll see if I can truly go to bed with dirty dishes piled in the dishwasher.) 

Today is supposed to be both sunny and warm, so I plan to take a long, leisurely walk. Maybe I will even start a new audiobook instead of forcing myself to continue listening to the book I am reading with a couple of friends. (I am nearly 70% of the way through it, and it’s just not my favorite. Although it is improving with time. I suppose for a five-book series, I should give the author a little time to solidify the world around me before throwing in the towel.) 

ANYWAY, despite all these happy things to look forward to, my husband is at the hospital and I am sort of feeling sorry for myself anyway so let’s skip right into some Sunday randomosity!!!!!!!!!! Aggressive exclamation marks!!!!!!!!

Edited to add: Turns out all I needed was to chat with you and pull a couple of fragrant pans of cupcakes out of the oven and my mood is considerably brighter. Onto the less aggressive and self-pitying randomosity!

Waiting to be filled and frosted!

1. My dreams have been highly stressful lately. Uncomfortably explicit dreams about people from my past. Not-finishing-the-assignment dreams. Last night, I dreamed that I worked at my old company, and got paid every month, but wasn’t actually doing any work. And there was an assignment due that I hadn’t yet begun, and I was kind of hoping everyone at the company had forgotten about me completely. But I was also feeling super guilty about getting paid for doing nothing. In the same dream, there’d been an Unknown Incident that resulted in needing to build a special room for my oven, but the room was in a tiny nook up several flights of stairs and it was 90 degrees in that space at all times. I think this last dream at least has some easily identifiable sources: a) I get hot to the point of needing to step outside every time I turn on the oven and b) my to-do list keeps growing and I keep not doing any of the things.

2. There are so many unappealing things on my to-do list. I think I’m going to try the thing where I list them out here, and the embarrassment of stating them publicly will spur me to do them. Come on, internet magic! 

  • Call the electrician. How many times am I going to mention this particular pressing task before I DO IT? The reason I have not taken care of it yet is because the electrician has both a weirdly specific estimate process and a weirdly complicated scheduling process. My husband suggested I find a new electrician; that would be WORSE, because these people have already done a whole-house evaluation and I cannot stomach the idea of researching a new electrician and having them come out and give us an estimate and then schedule a real appointment. I CAN’T DO IT. Also, we get a discount with this particular electrician which has to count for something, no? 
  • Figure out how to fix the doorbell????? Perhaps the electrician could give us some thoughts, if I ever get him back out here? I am seriously considering becoming an electrician myself because it seems like it would be easier. 
  • Email or call the landscaper. The reason I am balking at this one is because I ignored the landscaper’s calls and emails for MONTHS before we were finally ready to sign a contract for next summer. Apparently, all you need to do to get me to spend money with your company is to badger me, politely but at regular intervals, for several months???? Anyway, now I feel like I can’t suddenly Be Available to talk about new things we want to do with our yard. Also, while I DO want to do new things with our yard, I don’t know what they ARE and I am not ready for that conversation (or the price).
  • Schedule a work call. This should be the easiest on my list, I think. The only thing holding me back is that I already reached out to this person and they didn’t respond, which always makes me feel like I am pestering. 
  • Figure out who will take care of our pool this summer. Talk about a Champagne problem!!!!!!! But getting a person whose purported livelihood is pool care/maintenance to call me back and then agree to have me pay them to do the work they purport to do is extremely difficult for reasons I don’t understand and I am avoiding it like whoa.
  • Put last year’s earnings into my retirement account. (Another Champagne problem. I am so lucky that 99% of my problems are this variety.) WHY is this hard? It should not be. And yet. 
  • Schedule Carla’s next dental appointment. The hygienist wanted to schedule it for me, but I didn’t know when Carla’s first day of school was, so I said I would call back once I knew… but then I looked it up while the hygienist was finishing up, and so I could have easily made the appointment, but didn’t because I didn’t want to bother her?????? So now I have to make a phone call. Yay. 
  • Put a check in the mail to the orthodontist. We get a small discount on the price of braces if we pay in full in cash. I did not have my checkbook (why?????) when I signed the braces paperwork, but the office manager kindly told me she would give me the discount anyway, if I just sent in the check by the end of the month. She even gave me a self-addressed envelope. Why have I not simply WRITTEN THE CHECK and put it in the mail? THIS is the easiest item on my list. Just do it, Suzanne! 
  • Figure out what kind of person addresses what looks like rot in the wood siding of my house. Probably I just need to google this. And then I will need to begin the rigamarole of calling people and having them come over and give estimates. Why did we buy a new house again? Who thought that would be a good idea?
  • Fulfill the giveaway I offered on my blog. Wait a second. THIS is the easiest task on my list to fulfill! Guess what?! J is the winner of the paperback giveaway! Congrats, J! I will reach out to you for your address and send you a copy of the second book in Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend series. 

3. You know how, in TV shows and movies, someone will cough ominously and then three scenes later they die of consumption? Carla is upstairs and I can hear her coughing and it is filling me with foreboding. We went to a school event the other day; I volunteered while Carla ran around in a howling pack of other children. Already one friend has texted me with the unsettling news that her kid just woke up with a fever. We have so far avoided the bulk of the Winter Illnesses that have felled nearly everyone else on the planet… but based on the frequency of the coughing, I suspect our time has come. 

4. There’s no way to correct someone’s misimpression about your birth date without making them feel bad and/or stupid, right? There is a person in my life who very sweetly wishes me happy birthday every year… the day before my birthday. And now their spouse is doing it, too. And it’s very thoughtful and getting it on the actual date really does not matter – TRULY – I am now forty-three years old and it’s unexpectedly lovely when people remember your birthday at all, let alone get the date right. This is just a charming quirk I should love for as long as it lasts, right?

5. The best article I’ve read in awhile is this profile of Jodie Foster. I love Foster – most recently in True Detective. What resonated with me most is the idea of simultaneously craving privacy and connection. I wonder if it resonates with you, too, if you have a blog. The idea of having someone I KNOW – even though that’s a silly categorization, because I know YOU so much better than so many people I see out in the three-dimensional world day-to-day – read my blog gives me hives. And yet I thrive on the connections I find here, in bloglandia, via our (in most cases) text-only relationships. It was validating and comforting to read about Foster, who seems to have a similar personality and a similar struggle with finding the balance between being known and being understood.

6. Instead of doing literally ANY of the things I need to do (which also include larger, longer-term projects that I did not list in bullet #1), I decided I would put together an old-school blogroll. And I DID, based on the very haphazard and unreliable methods I use to check blogs regularly. But then I could not figure out how to create a new page in WordPress. I mean. I think I *DID* create a new page in WordPress, but I don’t know where said page LIVES on my blog. So then I tried to add the new page to the menu, and got very confused, and this is all to say that I did not accomplish anything except a Word document listing many (but probably not all) of the blogs I read. SIGH.

7. In addition to cupcakes, I am contemplating another baked good. I recently enjoyed one of these muffins at a friend’s house. Subsequently, I found myself thinking about the muffin with such longing that I asked my friend for the recipe. But I have yet to break down and BAKE the muffins. So far. 

8. Swimsuit season is creeping ever closer. I will be spring breaking in a place that requires a swimsuit, so I am fretting abstractedly about swimsuits. I own a swimsuit, a black two piece that includes a top and a skirted bottom. To be honest, that is probably the swimsuit I will continue to wear. But I always find myself pining for a NEW swimsuit. It’s tough to find a suitable suit, or at least a suit I find remotely flattering, when I am self-conscious of my rather lumpy lower half. It’s not just that I’m a pear shape, although the top part of the pear grows ever wider with the passing years; it’s that my hips are not a nice pleasing curve from hipbone to thigh: there’s a divot in there. I believe the young people call it a “hip dip.” I have become convinced over the years by body positive Instagrammers that this is not, as some might say, my fault; this is how my body is shaped, and I cannot control it no matter how many squats I might do or how little I weigh. (The latter, I know for sure; I remember being a 100-pound active high school student and worrying about my “saddle bags.”) But my body shape still doesn’t lend itself to a lot of the more pleasing bathing suit styles. ANYWAY, we all have our Things, and this is (one of) mine. I guess I am just wondering, what does YOUR swimsuit look like? And what swimsuit are you ogling, in case the one you own suddenly bursts into spontaneous flame? 

9. My parents took me out to lunch for my birthday! It was SO DELIGHTFUL. I cannot remember the last time I celebrated my birthday with them?!? (Okay, yes I can; it was before Carla was born.) It was just the three of us and I felt very spoiled and loved and I cannot believe how lucky I am that they LIVE NEARBY. What a gift. I think we have settled into a good rhythm of seeing each other while allowing one another to Live Our Lives (although I would like to spend more one-on-one time with my mom). I hope I never take our time together for granted. 

Pile of presents from my family!!!! Plus Carla and I have been talking about our Future Hypothetical Cat, and decided that we want to name him Wallace and he will wear a monocle and will have coloring that makes him look like he’s wearing a white ascot and a brown or black suit jacket. Hence the picture she left for me this morning.

10. My holiday cards are still up. I don’t want to remove them, although my husband is making gentle noises indicating he is growing tired of them. I had enough this year to line the entire kitchen. I affixed them to the wall above the windows/doors and they make me so happy! We also still have hearts on all the walls, which also make me happy. Seeing as it’s still February, I don’t really feel a lot of pressure to remove the hearts. Perhaps I will take everything down right before Spring Break.

11. I have never really been a big Branded Handbag type of person. I don’t even really USE a handbag that much anymore. But I have recently found myself coveting a high-end handbag for myself. I blame this new desire on my choice to follow Class of Palm Beach on Instagram. Are you a handbag person? If you could get any fancy bag in the world, what would it be? A Birkin bag seems like the obvious choice, especially because they are considered a better investment than gold (!!!!), but it also sounds difficult to get your hands on one. (Please also keep in mind that there is no way I would ever buy a Birkin bag. This is pure idle fantasy.) 

Tulips! You can also sort of glimpse the hearts AND the holiday cards in the background.

Okay Internet. Tell me your favorite type of cupcakes and/or muffins. And please share all your magical body altering swimsuit choices with me as well. 

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Five for Friday + Mini Giveaway

1. For Valentine’s Day, I made two kinds of cookies. I had some leftover scraps of dough, so I cut out little hearts and whipped up a strawberry buttercream frosting and made little sandwiches. They were cute and tasty. Then I added a few cookies to these adorable plates I found at the grocery store of all places and gave them to a couple of local friends.

    My husband and I exchanged cards and candy and we got Carla a bunch of candy and a little pink bunny. (Side note: I happened to be near a Kohl’s recently and went in, remembering the luck I’d had finding stocking stuffers there. They had one tiny Valentine’s Day display and the rest of the holiday products were related to Easter. And not just bunnies — they had a strange array of large, weary-looking pigs, which seems a little odd for Easter. I mean, I would look weary if I were a stuffed animal on display in a Kohl’s too, that’s gotta be a hard job, but they were not particularly cute or cuddly and really seemed like they were counting the hours until they could clock out. I DID find one small, pink bunny and snapped it up.) Carla also cut out a bunch of paper hearts and stuck them all over the walls of the house. It was adorable and the hearts are still up and may remain for months.

    2. A recent parent interaction has me feeling cranky. And ranty, just to warn you. I was at a school event and several of us were discussing various challenges our kids are having, as one does, and the topic turned to leaving our kids at home alone. I was struck, once again, by how adamant some people are that their way is The Only Way. The comments ran the spectrum from, “Oh my gosh, I would NEVER leave a kid that age alone!” to “There is NO REASON a kid that age can’t stay at home by themselves for reasonable periods of time.” With equal emphasis and near outrage. 

    I don’t know why, after nearly eleven years of being a parent, I am still surprised by people’s inability to consider the wide array of differences in our situations, upbringings, and specific children, but I guess I am. I’m guilty of it too – I still cringe, remembering how I’d mentioned to a friend that I OF COURSE make my child sit in the back seat because the American Pediatric Association says it’s best to have them sit in the backseat until age 13… and then she’d gently noted that her child is not yet 13 and sits in the passenger seat. Gah. When I KNOW that she is a wonderful, thoughtful parent and also know that MANY of my kid’s cohort sit in the front seat of their parents’ cars, for a wide variety of reasons I cannot begin to know because I am not them. (ALSO, lest you have a moment of panic about your own car-seating choices, the APA data on why age thirteen is a magical turning point for kids suddenly being safe to sit in the front seat is not super persuasive! I have read it!) 

    Okay – there are obviously some parenting choices that are less safe than others; if we’re talking about an infant in the front seat, that would be different; if we’re talking about a child riding in a car without restraints, that would be different. But there are SO MANY things that have NO SINGLE RIGHT WAY and yet some people seem incapable of understanding that there are many equally fine ways to do a thing. 

    This comes up every time I mention that my daughter needs melatonin to fall asleep. People have strong feelings about melatonin! As they should! And yet I have Reasons – and have carefully considered the angles and have consulted with multiple physicians and continually revisit whether it’s a good idea in our particular case for our particular child. It’s just so frustrating when someone says, “I would never give my kid melatonin” or “If she’s tired enough, she’ll fall asleep on her own” or “She clearly needs more physical activity during the day, that’ll help her sleep” as though they know. 

    And this happens with everything! I have had people scold me for allowing my child to wash her own hair. Does she do a great job? Not particularly. But am I weighing Other Factors? YES. The ways we judge one another are endless! Food – frequency, type, preparation. Buying clothing at Target vs upscale department stores. Bedtime. Age-appropriate chores/responsibilities. Sleepovers. Access to devices. 

    Screen time is a big one. For my particular kid, screens are a no-go on weekdays. There are REASONS for this. Do I despise screens? Not really, no. Would I love to be able to set her up with a TV show after school while I make dinner? Sure! Would it be much more convenient if I could say yes to her playing a video game after she does her homework? Definitely. BUT IT DOES NOT WORK FOR US. I have no concerns about YOUR family’s screen time choices. None! If your kid has unlimited screen time every day, I am sure that is a choice you made based on what’s best for your kid and your family. (Please note that I am aware too much screen time can have a negative impact on children. I am not advocating setting your three-year-old in front of a screen all day every day, although of course there are still probably Reasons someone might make that choice! Like if that is the only way you can work the job that allows you to feed your family or if you are so sick or pregnant you cannot do anything else or all sorts of other situations I know nothing about.) If you ask me about screen time for my kid, I am neither judging you for your own screen time limits nor inviting you to say, “Come on, an hour of Netflix after school isn’t going to hurt anyone.” 

    I know I cannot SOLVE this problem, and all I can do is surround myself with people who say things like, “This is what we have found works for us,” and who don’t make black-and-white accusatory statements about what I SHOULD and SHOULD NOT be doing without having all the information I am trying to balance, but I am SO SICK OF IT. Listen. I am not saying that I am completely free of judgment. We all judge one another, to some extent, because usually we think our choices are The Right Ones. But… I try really hard to acknowledge that we all have different value systems and different priorities and that, mostly, we are all trying our very best. Also, we can all judge one another SILENTLY. It is hard enough to be a parent, turning to other parents for support about choices that you have made based on Reasons but maybe you aren’t really sure are the BEST choices, as in my case with the melatonin, you are just doing the best you can with the information you have, without having someone who is not an expert, especially on YOUR CHILD, say you are Doing It Wrong. 

    Wow. I really got fired up about that. MOVING ON.

    3. Accidental laundry efficiency hack? Laundry is my nemesis. I am pretty good about sorting the clothing into piles, and pretty good about putting the piles into the washing machine and washing them. I am less good about remembering to dry the freshly washed clothing, and then really terrible about folding the clothing. Yesterday, I had two loads of clean, dry laundry to fold and I was dreading it. I had a little more than twenty minutes before I needed to leave to pick up Carla from school and I just wanted to finish my book. So I made a deal with myself: I would set my timer for six minutes, and fold laundry until the timer went off. Then I would go read for fifteen minutes. Even a little progress on the laundry would make me feel better about it, I reasoned. Plus, sometimes if you get started on an onerous task, momentum will carry you through. I set my timer for six minutes, started folding… and FINISHED BOTH LOADS IN SIX MINUTES. How is that possible? In my head, folding laundry takes HOURS. But two loads took six minutes! (To be fair, I don’t fold all of Carla’s clothes, because a lot of them hang up in her closet. Also, I only put away my own laundry – my husband and Carla ostensibly move their clothes from my bed to their own drawers/hangers.) It was an astonishing and bolstering discovery. Has this new knowledge prompted me to fold the clean and dry load of laundry that is currently hanging out in the dryer? No, it has not.

    4. How about a little mid-February giveaway? Amazon has issued me a refund for a product I did not return. I ordered a book and have not returned it; it’s right next to me as I type this. Nor have I returned anything else. And yet I got an email from Amazon saying they had processed my refund. I would like to pay for a product I received and kept, so I looked online at my options… and the only option I found (“cancel my return”) simply took me in a loop back to the returns page. I was able to chat with an associate, and they said I could keep the item. Seems like the perfect excuse to do a little giveaway. I have $14.40 in money that I should not have, which is the perfect amount for a paperback book that you’ve been meaning to read for a few years but haven’t gotten around to. If you want the chance to get a free paperback book, and are willing to share your address with me, let me know in the comments what backlist book you would order. I will randomly choose someone and send them the book of their choice, compliments of Amazon. Unfortunately, I will only be able to include US readers in this mini giveaway, which is a huge bummer. But if you are from outside the US, I am still interested in whatever backlist book you have been meaning to read but haven’t gotten to yet. Let’s say this giveaway is open until midnight on Monday, February 19 or until Feedly decides to say I wrote this post, whichever comes LAST.

    5. I am suffering from home maintenance burnout. This past fall, when we moved to our new house, we had to do so many things, some elective, others more urgent… and I grew so very weary of all of them.  But that doesn’t mean we are DONE with the home maintenance issues. I feel like they continue to pile up. This includes things I knew about last year that I intentionally put off until the spring (getting a tree cut back, finding a pool person, getting our air ducts cleaned, looking into the carpenter bees issue with our roof) as well as things that have cropped up in the interim (some electrical issues, a leak in our furnace, also our furnace is making a weird noise, our doorbell is caput). But I am having such a mental block to doing the things. Maybe if I write about it here, the guilt and self-consciousness will spur me to schedule at least one of them? Maybe I need to apply my laundry efficiency hack to making home maintenance phone calls, somehow? (Except they always drag on so much longer than they should, and require research and multiple phone calls and visits. This is part of the problem.)

    That’s all I have for today, Internet. Hope you have a wonderful weekend! 

    by

    The Kitchen Mystery Revealed (+ Giveaway Winner Also Revealed!)

    The day before my parents were to arrive, I decided to begin some deep-cleaning projects that should really only be started when a person has many, many days in which to make a huge mess and then slowly restore order.

    But perhaps you understand the intense and gripping panic of not wanting your mother to open the door to your pantry and think, “Has my child never thrown a single thing away in her life?”

    Tidying the pantry was indeed one of my projects. I began by throwing out all the expired food. (We had a bag of chia seeds that puzzled me; have I ever used chia seeds? Turns out they expired in 2016.) Then I re-ordered the shelves, so that the breakfast foods that had migrated onto three shelves were now neatly arrayed in their own breakfasty area. Then I got rid of things that I knew we weren’t going to eat, like the box of fennel seed crackers my mother-in-law donated to us earlier this fall. Then I consolidated things: two boxes of Ritz crackers could be combined into one. Two tins of oatmeal could also be combined. And we had a jar of couscous that was only a quarter full, and two boxes of only recently expired couscous that I could add to the jar. 

    First, I opened the jar and gave it a sniff. We haven’t had couscous in awhile. The jar smelled distinctly stale. 

    It was such a little bit of couscous. I tossed it into the sink. Then I ran the disposal, just for good measure, and moved along with my day. 

    Finally, the pantry was clean and neat – so clean and neat that even my husband remarked upon it when he first saw it. But that was later. After. 

    At some point, I went over to the sink to wash my hands. The water didn’t fully drain, so I pressed the switch to run the disposal. 

    A geyser of couscous flecked water erupted from the non-disposal side of the sink, getting couscous and who knows what other bits of old food all over the counter, the window, the little corner draining board where we set the Scrub Daddy and dish brush. Ew.

    But then… the water didn’t drain. It simply stayed in the sink. I ran the disposal some more. You need to run water while you’re running the disposal. The sinks continued to fill with couscousy water. 

    I have no idea why the Scrub Daddy remains so CHEERFUL.

    At this point, I understood.

    While I know (from bitter experience) that you cannot stuff potato peels, carrot peels, onion skins, celery, or other undigestible food matter into the disposal, I had forgotten that couscous is not a small dry grain that can be easily ground up by the blades of the disposal. It is a PASTA, that EXPANDS when it is wet. 

    I had broken the disposal. Right before my parents were to arrive. For Thanksgiving, a holiday during which my disposal does A Lot of work. Cue hyperventilation and tears. 

    Immediately, I called the plumber. In a tear-choked, panic-strained half-sob, I explained my problem and that I had guest coming the next day, please send help! The very kind dispatcher said they could put me on the schedule for tomorrow or the next day. As though there was a choice. TOMORROW, I said. 

    The Scrub Daddy continued to grin up at me, taking far too much enjoyment from my pain. My sinks were unusable. Even for hand-washing. They were disgusting, the water in them cloudy, bits of food and couscous afloat. 

    I opened the under-sink cabinets and that’s when I discovered the leak. Water was oozing out of one of the pipes and onto the bottom of the cabinet.

    I removed everything to the counters.

    Even in the midst of disaster, the urge to blog remains unrepressed.

    Fortunately, the leak wasn’t a big one. It was just… a gentle ooze. I cleaned everything and then stuck a towel under the pipes. 

    Then I wandered aimlessly around the kitchen for awhile, texting my husband. 

    This is exactly the kind of text you want to receive from your spouse while you are AT WORK and can do nothing about it. Probably you will be shocked to hear this, but I may be a bit dramatic at times.

    He wanted me to remove the fluid from the sink… but… HOW?

    The panic was beginning to subside. A bit. So I googled. And found a video where some other poor idiot had messed up his sink and was now recording the fix for posterity and clicks. It looked… doable. Gross, but not impossible. Simple, really. You just disconnect some of the pipes from one another, clear out the clog, put everything back together, and you’re good to go.

    At this point, the plumber texted me. They said something like, “We are going to try to get a plumber out to see you tomorrow if we can.” I seem to have deleted the text, so the exact wording eludes me. But it was not a confidence builder. It implied that I might be sitting here with my clogged, couscousy sinks until well past Thanksgiving.

    The possibility of no plumber strengthened my resolve to Do Something myself. 

    I gently tried loosening one of the joints in the pipe. The leak intensified. So I went on a search for a container for the water. My bucket didn’t fit under the pipe situation, so I located a bunch of large-ish food storage containers. Then I had a stroke of genius and discovered we had a large aluminum casserole pan (the kind in which you bake food for new moms) in the freshly tidied pantry, so I got that out and set it on the towel under the pipes. 

    The pan is the correct size and shape, but it is Very Flimsy.

    I turned off all the water. I unplugged the disposal and hung the cord up over the cabinet door, away from any water contact. I figured out how to separate two of the pipes from one another, very slightly, and I was able to drain the water from the sinks by holding the two sides apart. It was hard on my arms, but it really helped control the flow of water. Every so often, I would pour the contents of my aluminum pan into my bucket (it was too flimsy to hold much), and then dump the bucket in the toilet. 

    Once the sinks were clear, I reconnected the water and tried running it through the pipes again. The sinks immediately filled up with water and I had to drain them again. Once re-drained, I reconnected the disposal and tried running it. The disposal seemed to be working, but again the sinks filled up. Relieved, I felt confident I was dealing with a clog and not a broken disposal. Surely unclogging a pipe would cost less to fix than replacing the disposal.

    But now that I’d had luck draining the sinks, I wondered if I could do more.

    Perhaps I could unclog the pipes by myself.

    T

    My main concern was breaking the disposal/pipes/sink more than they were also broken. So I called my father to see if he thought it was something I could tackle myself, or if I could wait for the plumber.

    When you are driving at high speeds on the freeway, getting a frantic call about home plumbing repairs from your middle-aged child probably isn’t ideal. Although who knows. Maybe it was just as entertaining as an audiobook.

    His first suggestion was that I use a plunger to try to push the clog along… but that didn’t work. It was clear that I needed to remove the clog directly from the pipes. Communicating by text via my mom – my dad said he thought I could do it. 

    Supplies: A wrench big enough to loosen the nuts holding the joints together. A bucket or pan. Done and done. 

    He had me sent pictures of the pipes to my mom, so he could figure out which way I needed to turn the nuts. (I don’t know why he wanted to be sure; I kind of thought I would try it one way and then if it didn’t work, I would try it the other way. But when you are asking your parent for plumbing guidance, you do what he tells you.) He told me which direction to turn, and I used my tool to unscrew the nuts. I have no idea if I am using the right terminology at all. I complained via text that my tool wasn’t very effective, and my dad asked for a photo of it. I sent it to him and he told me I was not using a wrench, I was using pliers. But they should probably work. 

    And they did.

    I got all of the nuts off the joints, I was able to clean out the clog, reattach everything, and run water through the disposal. It took me nearly THREE HOURS from clogging the sink to de-couscousing everything and putting it all back together. But I did it. 

    Here’s the text I sent to my husband:

    Here’s the text I sent to my mother, who, I will remind you, was a passenger in a car my father was driving, TO MY HOUSE from their home across the country, this entire time.

    It is very, extremely satisfying to resolve a problem. Especially, I would wager, when you are unaccustomed to both the type of problem and the methodology necessary to resolve it. It wasn’t easy, but it was simple and the result was wildly gratifying.

    And the repair has held ever since, with no additional leaks. Even through Thanksgiving.

    When I picked up Carla from school that day, I was so high on my experience – gleeful! triumphant! – that I told her all about the clog and my newfound plumbing acumen. I handed her my phone so she could look at the photos as I talked.

    She was delighted by the story. I spared no detail. She was an ideal audience: rapt, full of questions. She loves to help my father build and repair things, so I think she quite enjoys DIY content.

    “And I fixed it! All by myself!” I concluded.

    “No you didn’t,” she said. “Grandpa helped.”

    Okay. Fair. 

    Still looking at the photos, she said, “I have one question Mommy.”

    Yes?

    “Why did you use pliers instead of a wrench?”

    Okay, Carla. Next time YOU can fix the clog. 

    As you will recall, I introduced this little experience with a guessing game and an associated giveaway. It was so fun to read everyone’s guesses about what happened. So many of you have had similar experiences, and I feel such kinship with you all. Also: I am VERY GLAD it was not mice. 

    The winner of the mystery giveaway is Gigi Rambles! Gigi, I will email you for your address. (And yes, you are not imagining that this is different than originally posted — I completely ignored the previous winner’s desire to opt out of the giveaway. Reading comprehension, folks! It’s a good thing!)