Today’s Lesson: Hire a Plumber and Make Him Use Code Words.

So yesterday was a pretty annoying day, though I got stuff done. However, I learned a very important lesson that it is vitally important to share with all of you.

First, some background. Lots of phone calls, driving around, and appointments yesterday. I had a turkey that had been defrosting in the fridge for a long time and I was afraid it was going to go bad. I was a huge turkey, annoyingly huge. My plan was to practice deboning a turkey and then turning it into nuggets. If so much had not been going on on Wednesday this would have been a highly pleasurable activity. I was looking forward to it, but I knew it would involve a lot of frustrating work. I also knew I’d have to do this at night when the child was asleep because raw turkey was going to get everywhere. Seriously, this turkey was twice the size of my roasting pan. I need a large dissection tray for a bird like this. I ended up laying it on a towel.

So, after all was said and done last night, the child got an accidental nap and was refusing to go to bed. I decide to go ahead with the turkey processing.

Isn’t coming out that great, mostly because I’m rushing just to get it done… after everything that day I just wanted the turkey processed. I’d have roasted it but we just had had roast turkey so I knew it wouldn’t get eaten. Thus, I wanted to make and freeze nuggets.

I make mediocre nuggets… but towards the end, the dishwasher starts flooding. A clog!

It’s a disaster in the dishwasher. The cheese I’d used to make mac ‘n cheese for lunch it turns out makes awesome glue. All the dishes are literally covered in speckles of hardened on cheesy stuff that seem to only want to come of with individual attention to each and every one with a fingernail. Turkey residue is draped over everything. Meanwhile the last of the nuggets are burning…

I do everything I normally do to unclog the drain, but it isn’t working. It’s clear I need to take the protective grate covers off the drain and GET IN THERE. However, I’ve never been able to take them off, even when I bought the house they were not removed because I have no decent screwdrivers. For some reason I have never remedied this.

So, my countertop is covered in nasty rawish turkey and cheese smeared dishes, putrid greasy water is all over the floor, in a towel and on my clothes… and I finally discover that a screwdriver/flashlight thing my mother got me a few years ago works on the grate screws.

I was so naive. So… young. Innocent.

I miss the old me.

What I saw in that grate cannot be unseen. And it wasn’t even the clog.

It was thick, very thick. It was mushroomy. It was highly textured. It came in colors. It was starting to grow a skin-like membrane on some of it. It was… too horrible to be described. I just want to somehow UN-eat everything I’ve eaten in the past 5 years. I couldn’t even vomit, it was too overwhelming. A picture seemed inappropriate, it was that horrible. I stared into its creases and realized I no longer wanted to live. I wanted to cry but no tears came.

……….

……….

……….

It took me hours over two days to get the dishes clean of that stuff. I soaked the dishwasher and grate overnight with washing soda. It didn’t unclog, but it surely helped. I stuck my hand……… into that stuff. Eventually the dishwasher started working again. It’s almost….. sane again. Clean. Healthy. Safe.

Almost.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *