Thanksgiving Joys & Pains

‘Twas the day after Thanksgiving and all through the apartment, dirty dishes were stacked, and…. and darned is I can think of anything that rhymes with ‘apartment’.

But yes, it’s Black Friday morn, (as they say in the retail world, referring to the slew of crazy shoppers that jumpstart their holiday shopping the Friday after Thanksgiving) – But today I’m not shopping. Well, to be completely honest, I NEVER shop on the day after Thanksgiving. I usually start decking my halls with Christmas goodies or plan out what to do with the leftover Thanksgiving goodness or clean the lint from my naval, or ANYTHING that isn’t leaving my domicile and going into the madness of the busiest shopping day of the year. But this morning, I am sitting among piles of dirty dishes, waiting for a plumber to arrive.

Yesterday’s Thanksgiving started on a great note: I woke up early; fixed myself some coffee; began brining the turkey; popped on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade; and promptly began making a pumpkin pie. I was extremely happy with the fact that, for the first time in six years, I was again making the Thanksgiving Dinner. Living in the same city-area as my in-laws for the past six years has put a damper on this – They were always insistent on having the holiday meals at their house. It’s a battle that I fought, (and lost), every year. (And I predict that the battle will continue when they move up here.) Aside from a couple of hiccups here and there with regards to the turkey, the meal came out great! As it was, the turkey just took quite a bit longer than I had anticipated; (I think the turkey may have been a little frozen in some spots here and there when I initially put it in the oven.) But, thanks to the brining process, it did NOT dry out! In fact, the dark meat cooked faster than the white meat, which is damn near impossible! I’m chalking my turkey hiccups up to the fact that I haven’t done it in six years. But, since I planned to sit down to eat at about 3 in the afternoon, it wasn’t a really big deal when we ended up sitting down at 6. (It WOULD have been an issue if I planned to sit down to eat at 6, and we didn’t end up sitting down to eat until 9!) But it wasn’t a problem at all. It was nice and relaxed. And between the cheese, wine, pumpkin bread, and homemade foccacia, no one was about to eat the table when we DID sit down to eat.

What made this Thanksgiving one to remember was that, late in the afternoon, as I was cleaning up some things, I heard some dripping under the sink and soon realized that there was a leak in the trap. At first the leak was slight – Enough to be an annoyance, but not such a big problem that it couldn’t wait until the next day for a plumber. So, I just put a pot under the sink and went on with my business. (Besides, what were the chances of getting a plumber at 4:00 in the afternoon on Thanksgiving?) About an hour later, the slight leak turned into a major problem with water spraying all over the cupboard under the sink and seeping onto the kitchen floor. I stopped up the sink and we placed a call to the emergency maintenance number the apartment complex provided. A few minutes later, I noticed the trap was continuing to spray water, even though I put a stopper in my sink. It was a bigger problem – There was a clog somewhere in the main drainage pipe for the apartment building, so when anyone living in any of the apartments above us used their sinks or dishwashers, it would back up into our sink. A nice, Cuban plumber arrived within a half hour of our phone call. He fixed the leak with no problems, but had to get an industrial snake to put down the drain to work on the clog. My apartment kitchen is very, VERY small. It has very little counter space, and is extremely crowded when more than one person is in it. It is important to know that, while the plumber was working, I still had things on the stove and in the oven. Every once in a while I would have to ask the plumber to step aside, while I opened the oven, or he would have to ask me to move something to access the disposal. In hindsight, the dance we shared was pretty damn funny. But, after about a half an hour of working on the clog, he couldn’t do anything. So, we couldn’t use the sink for the remainder of the evening. To complicate matters, at around 7:00, when people in the apartments above us started doing their dishes, the water level began to rise in our sink. My brother jammed the stopper into the sink to keep the water level from rising, but then the water just started getting out from an exhaust hole in the wall above the sink. Again, this is something that is quite funny now, but at the time, it wasn’t very funny. We called the emergency number again; the nice Cuban man came again and, although there wasn’t anything he could do to fix the problem, he went to all of the apartments above us and asked the residents not to use their sinks or dishwashers.

As I was writing this blog, the plumber came this morning and fixed the problem. Huzzah! I have a working sink! Now I have the joy of washing the dishes.

Whee!