Short story

Our house, like most homes, has one thing in common with Disneyland: It’ll never be finished. There’s always something to spend money on.

But for some strange reason I'm sure has nothing to do with the fact I live a freelance life instead of having a real job, the funds aren’t always there. Even though the opportunities to spend them are.

So by necessity we’ve always taken a triage approach to the house. Stop the bleeding first.

Oh yeah, and don’t let a short in a plug burn the house down.

If you follow this blog (and really, shouldn’t you have better things to do with your time?), you’ll remember my joy about our new garbage disposal.

That came to a screeching halt over the weekend when my wife informed me it’d stopped working. Knowing the shape the power source lurking under the sink was in, I was pretty sure it wasn't the disposal's fault.

As you can see, the plug under the sink is really the monster under the bed you don't want to think about. At least I didn't, until the plumber that installed the disposal came back two days later to install filters for the ice-maker, and bumped the outlet box which was hanging by a thread. The (live)wires barely holding it became disconnected, and power was lost.

By the way, just FYI, you're supposed to change those ice-maker filters every six months. Not every three years. Turns out "black ice" is actually a driving term.

Anyway, we all have our own special set of skills. For example, if you need someone to write about fixing things in the house, I'm your guy. But if you need someone to actually fix them, not so much.

Because of my complete lack of skill (interest?) in repairing things around the house, I have a go-to list of people who are my home support system. So I went to it. I called our electrician, who repaired the outlet in about 20 minutes. I thought it would be a much bigger operation, but then I always think that. I was fully expecting he'd be ripping out drywall, rerouting conduits and waiting for inspectors.

None of that happened.

Instead he stripped the wires, replaced the outlet and secured the square box to the round hole in an almost upright position (coincidentally the same one I'm in most of the day).

Now when we throw the switch, the disposal happily grinds away. And once again I'm free not to think about the seamy underbelly of the kitchen sink.

Until six months from now when it's time to change the ice-maker filters again.

 

Money down the drain. (Or what a glass hole).

Garbage disposals are great for grinding up leftover food off dirty dishes, eggshells, broccoli the kids don't eat, orange peels, things like that.

Glass? Not so much.

Two nights ago, while hand-washing a large, expensive, Pyrex glass storage dish in soapy water, my wife lost her grip on it and it shattered into a bazillion pieces in the sink.

I was in the next room when I heard it shatter, and immediately went running into the kitchen screaming the one question any concerned husband would ask, "Did the dog get hurt?"

Unfortunately, it broke over the side of the sink with the disposal, and a ton of glass went in.

I know what you're thinking: hand-washing? Downright primitive, right? What's next? Pounding laundry on rocks? You're preaching to the choir.

Next thing you know we'll get rid of our microwave and start cooking hot dogs in a toaster oven.

Oh, wait, we did that. Crap, I thought I dreamt it.

Anyway, after I cleaned all the shards of glass out of the sink, I decided reaching into a disposal full of broken glass to get the pieces out might not be the best idea. I also thought grinding it up and washing the glass down the drain probably wasn't much better.

But with Plan B I got to keep my fingers. So I turned on the disposal.

Besides Gilbert Gottfried and Fergie there aren't a lot of things that sound like glass being ground up by a garbage disposal. It jammed up almost instantly, and I knew we'd have to get a new one.

So today, Raphael the plumber was here to install the new Insinkerator. I would've done it myself, but as I've said before the only tool I know how to use is the Yellow Pages.

Raphael has been here before. When the faucet on our bathtub sounded like we were going to need a crucifix and Father Karras to fix it, Raphael did his magic - not with an entire new pipe and stem like we thought, but with a 99 cent washer.

An honest plumber. A man of integrity. There's a lot of love for Raphael in our house.

Our new glass-free Insinkerator is awesome. More compact than its predecessor, we now have room to lose old sponges and store more almost-empty cans of Comet under the sink. It's also considerably quieter, and not just because it's not grinding glass.

So, what can we take away from all this?

Don't hand wash the dishes. Nothing good comes from it. Ever.

There are honest plumbers in the world. Well, at least one.

And finally, don't ever trade in the microwave on a toaster oven. Making hot dogs is okay, but you won't have popcorn nearly as often as you used to.