1. I woke up determined to remain calm about the plumbing problem in the basement, not to stew about it, and to go about my day until the plumber arrived sometime in the afternoon. Not long after I woke up, Ed called from Pinehurst wanting to know if I'd like to grab a cup of coffee at The Bean. I sure did and we had a great session and I told him about Tuesday's geyser in the basement and he figured the problem would be solved once the plumber brought in his equipment and cleaned out the line. Ed also presented a worse case scenario that involved excavation and creating a new draining field and even as he said he hoped I wasn't looking at this kind of deal, I kept my cool, urging myself not let my too often anxiety-driven imagination go wild. Even when I returned home, rather than sit around and worry, I went through the paces of my day, paying bills, refilling my medicine tray, cleaning the kitchen, clearing the backyard of messes the dogs had left, and putting the garbage can to the curb.
2. The plumber had had two difficult jobs in Wallace with houses built early in the 20th century that had their original plumbing. He told me this as a way of apologizing for not arriving at our house until around 4:00. I asked him if he succeeded in his Wallace jobs. He said that he did and I said, through a big smile, "So now you feel fresh and have a good attitude and are ready for another success?" He laughed and told me he sure was.
And he was. The plumber explained the way the kitchen pipe coming to the basement and the discharge pipe coming out of the washing machine joined and that over time gunk builds up and blockage occurs. He lugged one of those snaking contraptions to the basement, ran the cable through the basement drain, and cleaned out the stoppage. He ran the washing machine and let it drain.
No geyser!
The plumbing problem was solved and he gave me a few tips about how to slow down the building up of gunk. He told me about soap and lint and food. His chief bit of advice was to consider not using the garbage disposal which sends food bits down the line from the kitchen and, in time, those bits can accumulate and can cause problems.
No problem.
Soon after the plumber left, I rewashed the sopping wet clothes I took out of the machine on Tuesday. I checked how they were doing at key times in the cycle and I'm happy to report:
No geyser!
3. In the afternoon, while waiting for the plumber, I kept anxiety at bay with a cooking project. I took the turkey wings I had thawed overnight and put them on parchment paper on a baking sheet and roasted them in the oven for 45 minutes at 450 degrees. I let them cool and removed the meat from them and put the bones in a ziplock bag in the freezer to slow cook for a future soup stock. I chopped up an onion, some baby carrots, and three ribs of celery and let them cook in olive oil at a medium heat until the onions started to turn brown. Then I added a couple quarts or so of the turkey stock I'd let bubble for a week and let all that simmer until the vegetable were tender. I cooked a pot of jasmine rice and poured it into the soup along with the meat I'd taken off the wings. I knew that the rice would make this into more of a stew than a soup and that was just what I wanted. I relaxed in the afterglow of the successful plumbing operation with a bowl and half of this stew, happy with how this day turned out.
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