You know a festive occasion is taking place at the Smith household if the kitchen sink stops up! Of course, it did just that for our Christmas Eve dinner. Now I don't like to take credit for such things and never mind that I stopped up my own sink at my New Year's Day party several years ago, this time it just wasn't my fault. After all, the drain must have been so clogged the potato peels got trapped...yeah, that's it, trapped in the clog that was already there.

Well, the story goes something like this! Based on my questionable Thanksgiving mashed potatoes, I decided to haul the Christmas Eve dinner potatoes to "the parents" house for preparation. Standing at the kitchen sink with my potato peeler flying, I remember thinking, "just reach down, scrape up the peels and throw them in the garbage." But no, that was too much trouble so I shoved them down the garbage disposal, turned on the water and turned on the disposal. My father watched me in dismay! Didn't take too long before we heard the sounds of water gurgling in the pipes and in seconds, the water backed up in the sink.

Daddy's face fell. Off to the basement he went for the tool box and his stash of plungers. We plunged and plunged, no luck. Then he took the trap off of the sink and cleaned it out, no luck. Meanwhile, Carol and Leslie showed up, each peering at the pipes, shaking there heads and commenting, "this happens everything we have a party." We continue to prepare Christmas Eve dinner around Daddy, who is down on his hands and knees, in his nice khaki pants with his head invisible under the sink. And yuck, we are getting our water from the bathroom sink...bathroom water!

An after dinner trip to K-mart (who else is open on Xmas Eve) for an auger and a couple more unsuccessful efforts with the sink and we finally gave up. We threw our grey water out in the front yard (hey, its okay, it was raining pretty hard) and wiped our dishes off in the garbage. Felt just like camping where throwing water in the outdoors is acceptable and wiping ones dishes with a paper towel is standard practice. We got a good chuckle over the effort. Leslie and I packed the dishes home and ran them through our respective dishwashers. Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas Eve!

(PS-the plumber arrived on Monday and unclogged the pipe with one push of the plunger. Lightweights the Smiths are!)


Christmas Eve at the Smith's! Moral of the story....NO STARCH IN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL! I think I learned it this time :-)