There have been many things in my life that I thought were a certain way because that's how they were in my home growing up. I accepted this as standard behavior and standard knowledge. This is generally a safe thing. Occasionally it results in slightly embarrassing moments. Like the time I almost corrected a friend for singing the Beach Boy's song "Barbara Ann". She was singing the words "Barbara Ann" and I started to correct her that the words were actually "Bopper Ann", when I realized that was my sister's nickname and more than likely the Beach Boys had actually used a common and normal name in their song. Fortunately, on that one I caught myself before the embarrassment ensued. Unfortunately, this weekend's experience did not involve embarrassment, rather it dug into my wallet. And there was nothing in there to begin with.
Sunday afternoon found me with a 20 lb. bag of potatoes and a few hours to turn them into mash for a church luncheon-thingy at 4:30. I only had a small pot so I was prepared to do them in waves. I peeled the first batch and chopped them up and got them cooking. No problems. I decided to clean up the peelings from the first batch and then peel and dice the next batch so as to have them ready to throw on the stove the moment the first batch was done cooking. I should interject here that growing up we had the world's most powerful garbage disposal in our kitchen sink. My grandpa installed it. If you knew him this shouldn't be surprising at all. This thing is a beast. You can grind up anything in it. Melon rinds. Chicken bones. Every conceivable thing you might cut off of a vegetable. Even potato peels. This grinder was a fact of life. I naturally assumed that all garbage disposals were equally useful as I proceeded to send my fresh cut peelings into its gapping maw.
I was about half-way through when I noticed that the water was backing up. Not good. Fortunately, I have experience with this as my sink back home suffered a similar fate when we once foolishly installed a 90-degree elbow joint that liked to get plugged. I quickly got under the sink and started taking the plumbing apart to clear out the line. It was very evident that whoever installed those pipes was not Pomp. They were tiny and full of twists and turns to make them useless for anything beyond draining the most purified, distilled water. I cleared them out and put them back together only to discover that the water was still backing up. A couple more times under the sink taking the pipes apart revealed that the problem went deeper than I thought. The plug continued beyond my reach, deep into the wall. I couldn't get those pipes apart and I was severely lacking in the plumber's auger department. Let's also point out that by this point Critter is wet, and hungry (I had been fasting all day), and muttering things he shouldn't have been muttering, and running out of time.
The first batch was done so I ran over to my neighbor's and asked if I could use their kitchen seeing as mine was having a bit of an off-day. Enlisting the help of my friend who was staying the week with me we moved our entire operation next door and tried to ignore the piles of dirty dishes filling the sink and thus making it difficult to drain potatoes and other such activities necessary in the mashing of spuds. We managed to get the second batch cooked and mashed, but due to the time lost trying to save the sink we didn't finish all of them. We packed up the mashed ones and brought along the chopped up ones to cook at the church while people ate, which we did. Of course there were heaps of left over mashed potatoes and so that is what I will be eating all week. At least I got some free food out of this. Anyway, the point is...
At some point during this crisis I called the lord and lady of my land and explained that I needed a plumber. I explained what had happened and they mentioned that that wasn't a very good idea. That potato peelings should never go down a garbage disposal. It was at this point I remembered that Pomp had installed that super-duper all-powerful disposal. My original thought that a newer model would be far better at grinding anything than the old model back home, proved to be... well... silly. So, there I stood on the phone feeling like a complete fool.
Today the plumber came. I wasn't there when he came. A little while later I was informed that he had fixed the problem and that as it was my fault would I kindly offset the $154 cost by $100 out of my own pocket? Thank you very much.
Sigh.
Can't really argue that one.
Shouldn't there be some sort of family insurance that covers things like this?
