There are hard and fast rules as to why I don’t ask my husband to fix things around the house. Valid, carved-in-stone reasons. Actually, just one reason. Because the man simply cannot take on a repair task and enjoy it for what it is – keeping our lives on a happily even keel. He ends up angry and that means things are broken worse than they were in the first place.
*sigh*
So, yesterday when the kitchen sink was clogged with heaven knows what, I set to it with a small kitchen sink plunger, knowing that a large plunger creates too much air pressure and will break the seals on the pvc pipes. I’m real smart like that. Well, along comes a rather annoyed spouse to "assist." I told him I was fine, but noooo, clearly I was a damsel in need of rescuing. An annoying damsel who clearly didn’t understand how much assistance she needed and who probably clogged the sink worse by not asking for help in the first place.
Out came a giant plunger. I told him we should get a pail and clean out all of my stuff from under the sink…but noooo. We cannot take advice from a rookie drain fixer-upper like me. Heck, I’m a girl for pete’s sake. What could I know about anything?
*ahem*
So, where was I? Oh, yes. Out came a giant plunger – we all know what the big plunger is for and it ain’t the kitchen sink. Ew. Aside from being totally skeeved out, I was also feeling more than a little trepidation as he set about to break the clog free. Well, as I prophetically foresaw, being practically psychic, the seals on the pvc pipe surrendered, draining the entire contents of both sides of the kitchen sink (as well as the stinkily stagnant water from the pipes) into the cabinet below. No pail was waiting for the deluge because, well, who could have possibly known this would happen??
Are you sensing some sarcasm here? Oh good, then I’m doing my job.
So, as a certain someone wandered about, cussing the weakness of pvc joints and the "morons who lived here before us" and the crisis in the Middle East and the scarcity of winning lottery tickets, I set about tidying up the mess. I emptied the cabinet of various and sundry cleaning supplies and dog toothpaste and then mopped up several pails of water, emptying them into the yard. The kitchen smelled like BUTT, I tell you, and there really isn’t anything less pleasant than a kitchen that smells like butt.
"Let’s just call it a night and we’ll go get a snake tomorrow," I said. But noooo. It made far more sense to keep on plunging and swearing and kicking things out of the way and telling me to hold up on the pvc pipe because it was leaking and therefore not airtight and therefore unplungable.
ANYway… after an hour or better of more plunging, which stripped out all the threads on the pvc connectors, and backed up a whole buncha water toward the dishwasher and subsequently all over the hardwood floor, not to mention BOTH of us covered in stinky sink drain water (and me in my workclothes, too!), "we" decided to buy a drain snake tonight (as well as all new pipe connectors) at Home Depot and start over from scratch.
Yup. Valid, carved-in-stone reasons.
What do YOU think?