Water Weekend

We had quite an eventful weekend around this household.  Saturday started with rain.  Lots of it.  We had planned to take our puppies to the Woodland Park Dog Paddle first thing, but it was cold and rainy and I opted for a little additional sleep instead. A couple hours later and several episodes of Properties Brothers, husband and I finally got off our asses and went for a run.  The temperature was perfect! 

I had been excited for weeks about taking our dogs to the dog paddle and wearing them out.  Sawyer loves the water and Jax had never been so I was anxious to see how he would react.  For those of you who don't know what the dog paddle is, it is something they do right before they drain the pool for the season.  They throw hundreds of tennis balls in and let all the dogs come and swim and play until their tongues fall off.  Or until their owners get tired of getting the wet "shake off" from strange dogs. 

As soon as we walked in the gate and let the monsters off their leashes, Sawyer immediately ran toward the pool where all the shiny tennis balls were.  Jax immediately ran as far away from us as he could and towards the nearest dog who would let him sniff its ass.  That's pretty much where he stayed for the hour we were there, with the exception of when we threw him into the pool.  That went over like a fart in church.  Jax gave us a scathing look, climbed out, and wouldn't come near us the rest of the afternoon.  Sawyer, on the other hand, swam for an hour straight, sometimes with 2 tennis balls in his mouth.

As you can see, a good time was had by all...plus, there was the added bonus of smelling like "wet dog" for the next 2 hours as well! 

After an eventful Saturday at the dog park and hanging with old friends in Louisville on Saturday night, I was anxious to get home on Sunday morning at R-E-L-A-X.  I had big plans for grocery shopping, a new dinner recipe, and to try out my new stand mixer from Williams Sonoma...all followed by a serious nap.  Well, the universe laughed at my plans, and after getting home at about 11:00am on Sunday and starting my chores, this happened:

That, friends, is what I like to call "a problem with the garbage disposal".  I cleaned out the fridge and sent some old food down the grinder after I had started the dishwasher.  No big deal, right?  I mean, it's not like I put egg shells or chicken bones down there.  Of course my immediate reaction was to continue to grind until it went down.  Strangely, that did not work.  I let it be for a couple hours while I mopped the floor and cleaned all the dog towels we had taken to the dog paddle on Saturday, then I consulted the ol' Google search engine for the answer to my problem.  Clearly, it was drano and a plunger.  Off to the store I went. 

I returned armed with groceries for the week and a renewed confidence in my plumbing skills.  On the way home I had even told my brother, "I'm on my way home to make the garbage disposal my bitch!"  Yeah...those words happened. 

After drano-maxx, and a plunger, this was the end result:

Time to consult google again.  Guess what I learned...pasta is bad for garbage disposals.  Who knew?  I thought back to the week-old fettuccine I shoved down there mere minutes before this nonsense occurred.  There was only one thing to do, and it involved a wrench.

I finally called husband and let him know what was going on in our kitchen.  "I think I need to open up this P-shaped pipe" I said.  He told me to get a big bucket and put it under the pipe because as soon as I removed it, water would come out.  We agreed that the 5 gallon bucket in the garage would be fine.  We were wrong.  I had the pipe unscrewed for exactly half a second (long enough to see that it was full of pasta) before I was surrounded by water.  Dirty, congealed, garbage disposal, old food, nasty, water.  I literally blinked and the water from the sinks were on the floor...the bucket was completely full and so was the kitchen.  {Insert panic here}.  I got my wits about me long enough to remember the stack of freshly cleaned towels in the laundry room and I went to town cleaning up the smelly mess.  The good news was that the sinks were empty and the pipes were now clean.

I think we can all agree on this one that even though I put the pasta down the disposal, this is clearly my husband's fault.  You with me?

An hour after this water chaos ensued, I mopped the floors for the second time that day and washed the towels for the second time as well.  By 4:00pm I was exhausted, but I'll be damned if I wasn't going to break in my stand mixer!  I made Apple Cinnamon muffins for us for the week, and they were delicious.  So delicious in fact that 2 of them went missing after leaving them alone to cool with the dogs.

So, a couple things we learned this weekend...Jax hates water, I hate garbage disposal water, I'm a muffin-baking goddess, and a master plumber.