The Auger

I wish I didn't even know what this is, but I do. This past Monday, we were experiencing some ugly blockage in our house akin to the intestinal obstruction I endured a few years ago. Yes, it was quite like that and almost as painful.

Our trash was overflowing and there was nowhere to go with it because the trash can in the garage was full til Friday. I was cleaning up after supper, but the food garbage and water would not go down the drain and the garbage disposal just spit it back to me. Soon, both of the drains in our double sink had pools of liquid in them and were staring back at me like a dog with goop in its eyes. Then, the dishwasher filled with warm stinky water. John unscrewed the pipes under the sink to look for a clog and he ended up replacing them because they were rusty. He also tried some Drano. But things just got worse like when you're trying to clean up a Christmas Tree and the whole thing falls over spilling the water underneath and staining the carpet, dropping needles and breaking ornaments and scratching the wall, all this when your wife and newborn son are in the hospital. But that's a different story.

We went to bed hoping the drain would resolve itself, but it did not cooperate with our wishes.

Tuesday after school, I told the kids the kitchen was closed. Then, giving in, I told Edward he could eat cereal right out of the box. For supper, I had an ever so bright idea to make a frozen pizza and serve it on paper plates to cut down on dirty dishes. This, of course added to our over- abundant trash. Then all the little cups and bowls of ice cream and glasses of whatever they were having to drink added even more to the cesspool of dirty dishes on the counter.

After a long day of work, John came home and tried a plunger to no avail. He then went for the AUGER at a nearby hardware store. This particular auger was a 25 foot silver snake-like instrument that cranks down the drain sounding like the noisy echoing zipper of a piece of luggage. He made it down the drain with the contraption while the kids (and even I) were watching American Idol. But the part that kind of got to me and made me realize I was headed on a slippery slope toward entropy was when he pulled the thing out: It was dirty and just whipping all over the place like one tentacle of a robotic monster octopus. The way it was flopping to and fro, I feared it was going to scratch the cupboards in addition to spraying mud all over the floor. And furthermore, I thought of all the germs that must live down in the drain. They were now living in the kitchen where our food is prepared. And remember, there were the 2 days worth of dirty dishes just hanging there, not to mention the constant reappearing puddles which overflowed from the dishwasher or sprayed from the pipes. It was bedlam. After 4 or 5 trips down to the center of the earth with the auger, John finally came to bed at about midnight to try to get some sleep right in the midst of the drama of the constipated drains. At this point, I was awakened from a pretty sound sleep so I went in to the kitchen to do more mopping.

The next morning, Wednesday, I came out to the kitchen but it was obvious that the kids had forgotten about the moratorium on eating. How do you dump out what's left of a bowl of cereal without a functional garbage disposal? If you dump it in the trash, you're putting milk in the trash can, if you pour the milk in the grass you dump cereal in the grass too. I felt like I was camping! Edward ate all his cereal and dumped the milk over the deck. Bridget ate her cereal dry. Maria left for Cedar Point on her class trip at O'Dark-Thirty and I honestly don't know what she ate. Sounds like a bunch of hillbillies.

The good news is John came home at lunch and poured some COMMERCIAL STRENTH GEL DRANO down the drain and when I got home from work at 1 pm the drains were all clear. To the tune and rhythm of their sweet gurgling sounds, I cleaned the whole kitchen. And I knew, things could be so much worse.