I will be the first to admit I love my garbage disposal.  Yes I said love, not like, not even overly fond of, but love love love.

Why such an obsession with a noisy and usually smelly appliance?  It shreds, eats and removes all traces of biodegradable material from my kitchen.  I don’t have to scrape plates into a near full garbage can and then shove the messy can back into the cabinet.

I can’t stand to have a garbage can sitting out in the kitchen…it just makes me feel like I’m cooking at the local landfill.  So my garbage disposal makes my kitchen an over all more pleasant place to be.  Therefore, I prepare more appetizing meals for my family and everyone is happy.

Yesterday, as I was feeding the disposal breakfast, I noticed water and great chunks of scrambled eggs and coffee grounds coming back up into the other side of the sink.  No problem.  I turned off the disposal and waited.  The water didn’t drain.

No big deal.  After all even the best of appliances have their bad days.  I headed out to the garage to get the yellow handled black plunger.  Except right before I touch it I remember my husband used it on the toilet a week or so ago and promised he’d replace my “kitchen plunger.”  I look around for the promised tool.  It’s not to be found.  It’s not to be found because my new “kitchen only” plunger is still sitting at Lowes and doesn’t even know its mine yet.

I shrug, pick up the now toilet only plunger, and spray it down with 409.  There is a mysterious, well not so mysterious, glob of goo on one side.  Too bad, in a hurry.  I did the upside down maneuver so nothing would drip on my freshly mopped floor.

I turn the plunger goo side out so I don’t have to look at it because I just might puke if required to think about it.  I dip the goo into the scrambled egg, coffee colored water.

I plunged so long I now have a set of very impressive calices on my hands.  One from pushing down the plunger and the other from holding the black cap over the drain hole on the other side of the sink.  Except, I wasn’t so good at the second part and water often spewed out around the sides and shot about 8 feet in the air and all over the floor.

After an hour of plunging and alternately wiping up spewed water, I quit.  I figured Drano was my next option.  Jumped in the minivan and grabbed a bottle at Kroger for $9.  It was a large bottle, but it was all they carried.

I used the whole bottle…did some more plunging, poured boiling water and baking soda down the drain and NOTHING.  Sure the water would move, a little.  But it took about 2 hours to drain an inch of water.

I really didn’t want to call the plumber.  Everyone knows they cost a bajillion bucks and I can do anything they can do…RIGHT?

RIGHT!

So off to Lowes today for industrial strength Drano, a new kitchen only with no goo ever plunger, and a snake.   Not a big fancy snake, but a little, hand cranked one.  I am plumber, hear me flush!

My dishwasher was filled with just about every dish in the house and we were using paper products.  It’s amazing what I will do NOT to unload dirty dishes from the dishwasher!

I try the industrial strength Drano.  Nothing.  I plunge another hour, now my calices have calices.

I look at the snake and sigh.  Screw it, that’s NASTY, I am calling a plumber.

I grab the yellow pages and look for coupons.  There are two coupons for $10.  One for Roto Rooter and another for a small company in town.

I opt for Roto Rooter for no better reason than I like to watch the show Ghost Hunters on Sci-Fi occasionally.  Those guys started out in Roto Rooter trucks before they got all famous and bought Escalades or whatever they drive now.

I called and the woman who answers seems just a bit too perky for me.  Probably because she gets paid a bajillion bucks too.  She wants to know if I need someone “right away.”  I played it cool because I don’t want this being billed as an “emergency call.”  I don’t even know if that is a real kinda bill…but well, if I was a plumber I’d charge more for “emergency calls.”  It sounds much more serious.  And there has to be something after a bajillion.

So I told her, Nah its just an average clogged sink call.  Even though not ten minutes before I discovered the little “U” pipe under the sink, (later learned this is called the “trap”) spewing water.  Not leaking, spewing.  I placed a pot about 10 inches from the pipe because that is how far the water was spewing.

But I played it cool and said “whenever.”  She said she’ll call me back when someone is on their way.

I hung up and watched in trepidation as the pan under the sink fills with water.

Not fifteen minutes later the call comes, someone is on the way.

I won’t go into the gory details but two hours and many cut pipes later he was finished.  The whole time he was working I could hear the ticking of the clock in my head.  Odd  thoughts ran through my mind.  Why is this plumber thin?  Why can’t I see his butt crack?  What if the bill is so big it is worth more than my car?  Could I be homeless after paying this bill?  Why doesn’t a bajillionaire give a sista a break?  Would anyone miss one little old plumber?

Ok, maybe not so much the last one….much.

It’s ironic the very person I wanted to hurry up and get here already was the same one I couldn’t wait to see LEAVE, and quickly!  See ya!

The parts were a whopping $25.  The labor was $170!  After tax it was $199.94, and he didn’t even KISS me.  Har. Har.  Now can I borrow your hemorrhoid ring?

No, really.

He did give me a farewell lecture.  It seems my love is unrequited.  My beloved disposal betrayed me these last several months.  It’s not chewed and swallowed, just swallowed.  ~GASP~

My extortionist, I mean plumber, told me there are actually very few things my disposal can handle.  But he’d put me in a big un if I just gave him the go ahead.

Yeah right.

There was one more thing to do, something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and goose bumps rise on my flesh.  I still needed to call my husband in DC and tell him how I just paid a man $170 to do a $25 job.

I was right to be skeered.  When I told him the phone went silent.  I listened for breathing, for gasping, for anything.  Nothing.  After a minute he laughed and told me I was nuts he would be home Thursday and I coulda just waited.

Huh?  That would mean washing dishes!  And if that isn’t bad enough it would mean unloading the dishwasher of dirty dishes and carrying them to the utility sink in the laundry room.

Did I mention it would mean washing dishes?

So now I know unless I upgrade my little deceitful, pretending, non eating appliance….I  will no longer keep my kitchen free of biodegradable garbage.

Treachery!