Saturday - Raising holy hell

There are many ways to raise holy hell. My way happens to involve plumbing.

This will be for some a cautionary tale, for others, a teaching story, and for some, sadly, nothing more than a source of cheap laughter at the expense of others. Only you, dear reader, can decide where to place yourself on that continuum. Will you choose to learn? Or will you choose to mock, pillory, and generally make sport of one who spends nearly every waking moment Helping Others?

It all started with the urge to do a little cleaning and organizing in anticipation of a lovely Easter weekend with The Husband. I went to work in the pantry, which had spices in the cereal section and dog treats in the baking section, and some things that didn’t belong in there at all. In a dark, deserted corner were some leftovers from a baking spree in ‘06, some weird ingredients not likely to be used again in my lifetime, so I set out to dispose of a few things. There was a little container labeled “rice flour” and another little container labeled “superfine sugar” that was all caked up, and a big container with no label at all, but clearly it was chunky sugar granules. Yes, about 64 ounces of chunky sugar. I couldn’t even remember why I had chunky sugar, and I knew I wouldn’t be needing it again, so out it goes. Since sugar dissolves so easily in hot water, I decided to dump it all down the sink and run lots of hot water and the garbage disposal.

Well, pretty soon, the garbage disposal slowed down and then stopped entirely. And the funny thing was, the sugar didn’t seem to be dissolving. In fact, it seemed to be growing! What the hell? I reached into the maw of the disposal and that’s when it hit me. “I don’t think this is sugar,” I said to myself. “DUH!” I answered myself. Not only is it NOT sugar, it’s something that just maybe shouldn’t be put down the drain. In fact, I believe it might be some of those fun water-saving crystals that absorb up to 300 times their weight in water. Yes, I do believe that’s what I just emptied down this drain. 64 ounces of something that absorbs 300 times its own weight in water. Then I ran a few million gallons of hot water down there. Oh my.

It was right then that I decided I would deal with this later. So it was that The Husband arrived back to the country homestead very late last night and discovered a kitchen sink full of water that wasn’t going anywhere. I told him we would discuss it in the morning.

Luckily I awoke renewed, refreshed, and ready to raise holy hell.

Note that I didn’t say I was ready to comb my hair or get dressed. That is not required for raising holy hell in My World.

You might be tempted to say, “Kathi, why would you put 64 ounces of something down the drain instead of in the trash, anyway?” to which I might be tempted to respond something like, “Rick, why don’t you shut your pie hole and clear out of my kitchen right now?” (That is just a rhetorical scenario, of course.)

Now, what have we learned from this experience?

1. Don’t store magic water-saving crystals in an unlabeled kitchen container among baking supplies.
2. Beware of unlabeled containers that look like one thing but might be something different.*
3. Plumbing can be sensitive and temperamental.
4. Don’t clean, and don’t organize.

*You would think I might have learned this back in 1963 when I dropped a burning cigarette that I stole from my Dad and smoked on the sly into a jar of ashes that I got from my brother Bob’s desk drawer only the ashes turned out to be gunpowder and when it blew up and I dropped it, it burned a big hole into the carpet and nearly through the floor and downstairs to the living room. But 1963 is a long time ago. Memory fades.