Tiny Rays of Sunshine

So come this morning the kitchen sink is still clogged.

A week or ten days ago, I paid an outfit found on Angie’s List $271 to install a new garbage disposal, which the plumber claimed would fix the problem. It did not.

When he saw it would not, he said, well, the way the thing is hooked up under there, this one piece of piping has settled so it’s no longer angled so water drains downward from it. It needs to be replaced, but he’ll have to order the part.  He’ll call when he has it.

Days pass. The kitchen sink continues to clog. It freaking hurts to have to plunge the effer, because of the dissected boob. I call. They say they’ll get in touch with him. Day or two later, I call again. They say he’ll come back NEXT TUESDAY.  Yesterday the sink plugs up and won’t drain.

Back to Angie’s List. Find a different plumbing co, one with 423 “A” reviews. I figured you could fake, purchase, or bribe 100 rave reviews, but 423? Not likely. At least some of ’em must be the real, genuine articles.

Lovely young fellow shows up: handsome, clean, nicely groomed, amazingly punctual and amazingly polite. I tell him the tale told by the previous plumber. He studies the problem.

“Let’s take it apart,” says he.

And yea verily, he shortly discovers the obvious problem: a fat plug of black grease in the drain line.

I do try valiantly not to let grease get down the drain. But when you eat salad every day and you dress it with olive oil and lemon or lime juice, it’s hard to avoid SOME grease getting in there.

He shovels the thing out, rotoroots the thing out, cleans and whacks and cleans and whacks: a miserable job in a cramped miserable space. Reconnects the plumbing.

It works!

He says the black iron plumbing is probably getting constricted, it being quite a few years since it was installed back in 19 and ought 71. It will never, says he, run perfectly. But it’ll do the job for now. Replacing it with copper or plastic, he says, will be extravagantly expensive.

With the Angie’s List discount, he goes out the door with $153 in his pocket.

So…I felt a little less taken advantage of than I have over the past several weeks.

Otherwise, it’s crazy business as usual.

Cleaned up two piles of dog mounds — undoubtedly Cassie’s. Installed the fancy hinged kiddy gate in the office doorway so the dogs can be penned in here with me when I’m working, thereby preventing them from sneaking into the front of the house to poop. Job!

The minute the new plumber showed up at the door a) the phone rang–a choir friend; and b) Ruby escaped from the room where I’d penned her and THREW herself against the front door.

Phone: Lovely and dear friend wanting to commiserate on my trials and tribs. I can’t easily excuse myself because her trials and tribs far exceed mine and … well, it would be rude. I can’t pick up Ruby with one hand while holding the phone with the other because the boob on the  Ruby-picking-up side hurts too much for me to lift 15 or 18 pounds. The young plumber dude waits patiently in the blasting sun.

Finally I corral Ruby, let the gent in the door, and, while chatting, show him into the kitchen. Friend and I get off the phone. She has had REAL cancer, not “precancer” or some such bejabber, and everyone is worried and heartbroken over her very considerable challenges. It was incredibly, amazingly gracious of her to call and offer moral support.

Call old, beloved gynecologist down at St. Joe’s. I want a second opinion, and before I let the high-powered surgeon lop off my boob, I want a third opinion.

The Plumbing Challenge takes some time. Shovel the excellent young man out the door along about mid-day.

Gynecologist’s office calls: will I come in next Thursday at 8:15 a.m.?

Well, of course.

Shit. Good-bye to next week’s Scottsdale Bidness Association meeting. Now have to find someone to foist the meeting-chair junk onto. One person refuses. Other cagily does not answer email.

SBA members have agreed to buy one of the pricey rosaries for our venerable and much-loved server, Cathy. She approached me last Thursday as I was on the way out of the restaurant; when I said they were $50, her face fell. So, tomorrow I have to retrieve one of the rosaries from Choir Director, and next week must find a way to get the thing to an SBA member who does plan to attend the meeting.

Shoot out the door headed for Costco, where I need to buy something, anything for tomorrow’s choir potluck.

Figure to get Whatever for the potluck, a box of dishwasher detergent tabs, and if I can find them, one of the packages of precooked mussels I saw at a different Costco last week.

Potluck: Tres Leches cake/cheesecake/whatever it is, obscene! No mussels. Substitute $moked $almon and some sourdough bread and get some more tomatoes and, having been burned on the peaches now one too many times, buy a bag of apples for breakfasts and snacks.

By the time I get out to the car, I realize my boob isn’t hurting as much as it did. Maybe the Cipro is kicking in?

Doc’s office leaves word saying it should start to work within 48 to 72 hours. It has not been 48 hours since the first dose. Boob is still hot and swollen, but slightly less swollen. Probably a fluke, but who knows? Any port in a storm…

You know…

I forgot how comfortable it is to drive without a seatbelt on.

Can’t stand to have the damn shoulder strap across my chest, so I’ve been shoving that behind me, though keeping the seat strap part connected.

Hideously dangerous, I’m sure. My antique car has no side airbags. But ohhhhh so nice to be able to drive unconstricted!

I’ve always thought people who drive without seatbelts are morons of the widest stripe. But now I can understand why they do it. It’s just soooo much better!!!!

They’re still morons. But comfortable morons.

So: a few bright spots:

• Finally got the kitchen drain running, despite being ripped off by the prior plumbing co to the tune of $271.
• Found a very nice New Plumber; finally get sink fixed.
• Dear, lovely friend gets in touch, commiserates.
• Boob may be getting at least slightly better.
• Nice gift found for business group’s loyal server.
• Potluck dish purchased (not made!)
• Appointment scored with a possible second opinion.
• Decision made to seek third opinion before allowing a mastectomy.

It’s 3 p.m. I have done exactly no work. The dogs and I are going back to bed.