That sinking feeling is quite draining, much like these puns

There’s nothing quite like the feeling you get when you come home after a long, hard day of pretending to work, walking through the front door of your house, and have your wife greet you as you enter the door, saying those three little words:

“The sink’s clogged.”

Granted, those weren't the three words you were hoping to hear. You would rather have heard something along the lines of "I ordered takeout" or even "bingo whiskey tinfoil", although the second phrase probably means your wife is suffering from a concussion and requires immediate medical attention.  That being said, a trip to the ER is still preferred over an evening spent elbow deep in sink innards prying pieces of chicken bone from the garbage disposal.

While most of the household chores are gender neutral in our family, the wife and I have reached an agreement that, though it may not be politically correct, a few household duties will remain the responsibility of husband while others would remain the responsibility of the wife.  Husband specific duties include any activities that involve ladders, pipes, wires, or spiders.  Wife controlled activities include decoration, color coordination (such as picking out clothes for the children), and any other activity that if viewed by people outside of the family would cause public embarrassment or otherwise ruin the family name (such as picking out clothes for me).  Since a clogged drain involved pipes there was no doubt that it fell under my job description, so off I went to fix the problem.

Friends, I have seen a number of clogged sinks in my day (three, maybe four), so you’ll believe me when I say this was no ordinary clogged drain.  A clog is remedied by a few glugs of drain cleaner or a few plunges of a plunger that has allegedly never seen the inside of a toilet bowl.  In this case, both washbasins of the kitchen sink were half filled with a liquid substance best described as “Leftovers Smoothie”.  This was no mere clog; this was a plumbing failure of epic proportion.

My first course of action was to switch on the garbage disposal in the hopes that I could, in technical plumbing terms, “chum up the smoothie” and potentially break up the clog.  I leaned over the counter and flipped the switch, quickly backing away to avoid any splattering from the sink.  As the disposal blades whirred to life the surface of the liquid began to churn, swirling bits of former food particles and wonderful new smells to the surface.  The garbage disposal started shaking violently, vibrating the entire sink as it battled against the vile clog.  All I could do was stand back and watch, fingers crossed.  It was in God’s hands now.

The sink began to make a guzzling, gurgling, growling noise, sounding much like an angry bear being sprayed in the face with a fire hose. Slowly, a swirling vortex of sludge formed in the basin.  Between the vortex of unmentionable disgustingness and the angry noises, the sink looked less like a sink and more like a portal to another dimension. I armed myself with the nearest kitchen utensil (a spatula) preparing to fight back any demon spawn that might try to cross over.  Thankfully nothing did, but something was happening in the sink.  As the vortex achieved maximum velocity, the level of the liquid in the washbasin ever so slowly began to drop.  The battle is won! Huzzah!

The victory celebration was short-lived however.  I noticed the liquid in the opposite washbasin was bubbling and gurgling as its level was ever so slowly rising at the same pace as the other one was emptying.  I switched off the garbage disposal before overflowing the opposite sink, watching carefully as the levels in both basins eventually equalized back to their starting amounts.  Alas, this clog was too mighty to go down so easily.

(I did switch the disposal on again, repeating the vortex experiment.  I did this two or three more times, not because I thought it would help, but because I thought it was awesome.  I invited my wife to watch; she was less impressed.)

Eventually I managed to quell the angry clog by unleashing the fury of my drain snake, which is much dirtier than it sounds, just not in the way that you’re thinking.  My wife was quite happy to have the sink back in working order, and responded to this news with those three words that I always anticipate hearing upon completion of a home repair project:

“Clean your mess.”