It's Just Not Funny Any More

There are two running jokes here on the kitchen job site:

1) That we're in a race to see which kitchen is finished first; ours, or the one at the new location of a great Ethiopian restaurant in our neighbor that was originally slated to open October of '07.

Some days, my money is on the Ethiopian joint, though it does appear that I'll be able to fire up the oven (if it ever gets here) at our house by next weekend. [Fingers and toes crossed, please do the same.] I don't think the chefs at Emanu can say the same.

2) That our house hates us. No lie, pretty much everything we do has some kind of problem and generally speaking, if we do it once, we do it three times. It is the charm, you know. Some of the stuff that goes wrong can be attributed to 'user' error; my friends from Sweden have caused their share of headaches; and now HH Gregg is proving to be somewhat of a thorn in my side.

But something happened today that kind of gave me the creeps. I was in the basement anyway, so I decided to just go ahead and use my favorite bathroom while I was down there. After I finished my business, I went to wash my hands and noticed this gross, chunky, whitish-with-black-things in it gunk on the vanity and on the floor by the vanity.

After looking upwards, there didn't appear to be anything dripping from the ceiling. Peering in the sink, nothing seemed particularly awry there. It was a complete mystery for a few minutes as I tried to figure out where that disgusting sludge could have come from.

Finally, I determined the sink vomited. That's a creepy realization to come to. Very Amityville-horror like. And even more frightening was the fact that this all happened at 5 o'clock on a Friday – scary big bill if I have to call a plumber over the weekend. Isn't that always the way?

Our friend and contractor, Jim, told me to try some Drano and that we would pick up a snake tomorrow to see if we could clear the drain pipe. (It would seem that was backing up and causing the overflow to pop up in the sink - later on in the afternoon, more than once, the sink filled up enough to worry me it was going to overflow.)

Since I couldn't find any Drano here (nothing's ever around when you need it), I called up my neighbor, Amy, to see if she had any or, if not, if she could come over and hang out while I ran to the store since my little beano was sawing toothpicks.

She had some and was kind enough to give it to me – and to comment that my house does kind of look like the one in Amityville (thanks, Amy). By the time I got back to the sink, the water had drained out. I put some glugs of the Drano in there anyway and waited the appropriate 15 minutes to flush it with hot water.

It didn't back up again, but I believe it was thinking about it. I took a shower upstairs afterwards and brushed my teeth, the whole time wondering if I was flooding our basement as a result, but I was too scared to go look. Guess I'll find out tomorrow. I just hope the joke's not on me.