Relentless Inquiry

(Happy Holiday of the Sink Drain Returning to Service)

We successfully hosted our first Passover Seder in the New Dwelling. We had 14 or 15 folks. The Prophet Elijah did not eat kir gefilte fish. The sink drain kindly waited until dinner was ready to be served before it refused to drain. I was hiding it from Mike, but then felt guilty about practicing deception on a holiday. I said to him, “If I tell you something that might upset you, do you think you can promise not to freak out?” “Sure!” he said, happily, “No problem!”

“Our sink is a bit clogged,” I said.

He freaked out.

Yes, Mike freaked out, but at least he kept it confined mostly to the kitchen, and thus mostly under control. Seder and dinner proceeded. All of our everyday china except 5 bowls and 4 plates (out of service for 8 x 2) was stacked neatly into buckets of soapy water this morning by yours truly. The plumber arrived before 1pm, snaked things out via the roof, and left in under an hour, also fixing the below-sink leak.

I rushed off to work, where the LSF queue waited until about 5pm to stop correctly pre-empting Long jobs in favor of Interactives. Bah. I dug in up to the elbows, and distractedly left work at 6pm, when I was due home to meet the cat-sitter. Critter Care needed a site visit to our new place. This lady lives quite nearby, and will be watching the fuzzballs and watering the plants next week while we're down on our annual Catalina retreat w/the dive club.

After the cat-sitter left, Mike freaked out AGAIN, this time because I had put our dishes into the Horrible Evil Hideous Buckets. The bucket that had caught sink overflow and the bucket I have put potting soil and clean, vegetable-matter-only compost into. Both washed out triply with scalding hot water and soap before putting more scalding water and soap and dirty dishes into, but NO, that doesn't count. GRRrrrrRRRRRrrrrrr. I kept my temper by the barest thread.

Mike calmed down eventually after I refused to buy into the drama. I matter-of-factly suggested that there was still time for me to nip out to Target and get another set of dishes, and our current ones could either be trashed or given away to people who might not care as much. Or I could go to the Army Surplus store and get some kind of trench-warfare rated disinfectant, suitable for field KP usage. Whereupon it turned out that he would be happy with running the dishwasher on Long, Extra-Hot Rinse, Heated Dry.

Well. Could have saved ME a feeling like I'd been punched in the solar plexus after a hard day if we'd just cut to the chase with that one, but that's just life.

I love that man, but one of these days…. “To the moon, Alice, to the moon!”