Calgon, Take Me Away!

Do you ever have those "Calgon, take me away!" moments?  I get them a lot.  In fact, I think I've had more than my fair share of them in the last year.  For instance, things were going pretty good this week.  Sure, I had a migraine on Tuesday that pretty much incapacitated me for most of the day.  But after about half a bottle of ibuprofen and 6 hours of sleep, I was fine.  When I say, I had a "Calgon, take me away!" moment, it's a real moment.  Like last evening around 6:30 when I went in the kitchen and decided to clean the refrigerator out.  Actually, that wasn't the moment at all.  The moment didn't really happen until 30 minutes later. Here's how it went down.

I had 5 or 6 bowls of leftovers in the fridge that needed to be emptied and washed.  My parents are coming up today and I am cooking tonight and it sucks when you finish dinner with friends or family in the house and you can't fit the leftovers in the refrigerator because there is stuff sitting in bowls from 1977 that probably couldn't be identified with a microscope and a petri dish.  So, I decided it was high time I tested out my brand spanking new garbage disposal that was installed about 6 weeks ago.  Obviously, it has been slightly used since the installation.  But I generally only use it to wash the scraps down when I am cleaning out the sink.  I throw all chunks of food waste in the trashcan.  

You see, over the years I have had too many plumbing issues to put something as risky as an onion peel or a piece of meat in the disposal anymore.  It seems like every time a plumber has ever sat on my kitchen floor peering at me from beneath the kitchen sink he has added another item to the list of things that shouldn't go down the garbage disposal to the point that I'm not sure it can handle water anymore.  So, I've been very careful with the new one.  I had a goal of going 3 months without seeing a plumbers muddy footprints on my entryway floor.  I'm such the optimist!!!

So, in my frenzy of cleaning the refrigerator out I came across a bowl of mashed potatoes and another bowl of gravy.  Surely a garbage disposal can handle those two things, right?  I mean they are practically liquid.  And in there current state they were even more liquid like than normal mashed potatoes and gravy.  So, I tossed them in with the water running full blast and the disposal switched on.  The next item was a bowl of green peas.  How much harm can they do... really?  So, in they went.  Then I got bold.  I had a bowl of this potato and sausage skillet dinner thing that I make.  There wasn't much and the only chunks were sausage cut into bite size pieces.  I was feeling wild and carefree, so I threw it in.  Once all of that was done, I rinsed the bowls and put them in the dishwasher thinking to myself that I would turn the dishwasher on just before going to bed.  

Then I made my way back into my living room.  I had nothing to work on for clients.  So, I sat on the couch and began to flip through channels hoping to find something good on TV.  After a few minutes I went back into the kitchen to get a glass of tea and stepped in a puddle of water.  It wasn't a little splash of water, it was a puddle.  I followed the puddle and it seemed to be coming from under the kitchen sink.  So, I opened the cabinet and everything was wet.  Boxes of dishwashing detergent were soak clean through.  The box of trashbags came apart in my hand when I pulled it out.  Boxes of light bulbs fell apart when touched.  So, I pulled everything out dried things off as good as I could and then turned the water on and looked under the sink with a flashlight.  The water was coming directly out of the garbage disposal.  Nice.

So, I called the plumber who installed it and he said he had a completely packed day on Friday.  But he can come over on Saturday before I have to go to a shower in Keller and fix it.  So here's the situation I face.  My house was spotless prior to pulling everything out from under the kitchen sink.  Now, there is junk stacked around my kitchen, the cabinet is still soaked and the cabinet doors are open to help it dry.  The floor is filthy and needs to be re-mopped.  I have a dishwasher completely full of dirty dishes and my mother who could find major fault in Martha Stewart's homemaking capabilities will be here in 5 hours.  

I can't turn the dishwasher on because it drains through the garbage disposal.  So, I'm thinking that I'm going to have to empty the dishwasher and wash those dishes in the side of the sink that isn't leaking.  But last night when the "Calgon, take me away!" moment actually happened all I could think about was actually being taken away.  So, I got a glass of wine instead of the tea that I had originally gone into the kitchen for, came back into my living room, sat down at the computer and started researching cruises.

There are two non-Carnival ships leaving Texas ports on the weekend before my 51st birthday.  One is a Royal Caribbean ship and the other is Princess.  They will both be headed to Belize, Roatan and Cozumel.  Following my ordeal with the garbage disposal, I fully intend to be on one of those ships.  Currently, a balcony is starting at $1099 on Princess and $1049 on Royal Caribbean.  I'm thinking I'll go on Royal Caribbean's newly renovated Navigator of the Seas and check out the upgrades.  (It will go into dry dock in January and the renovation will be complete by the first week of February.)  I mean, really it's my duty as a travel agent to check it out once the changes are complete anyway, right?  I could just go spend a couple of bucks on a box of Calgon if I didn't think that it would damage my plumbing and end up costing me even more in the long run.  Nope, I'm pretty certain that a cruise in April will be cheaper in the long run. So, who's with me?