Thursday, November 02, 2006

The Kitchen Sink

Little did I know last night as I took my pain pill before going to be about 1 a.m. that today would turn out the way it has thus far.

Awakened about 4:30 a.m. for a bathroom call, I couldn't go back to sleep right then so I sat down at the computer to read the morning edition of the local paper, check e-mails, etc. Shortly thereafter, Katie got up to get ready for school. She had a bowl of cereal, put the empty bowl in the sink and turned on the spigot to rinse the bowl only to find there was no water coming through on either the hot or cold side. She mentioned this to me and I checked it and saw she was right but I had no clue whatsoever as to what was causing this phenomenon. It may have been a tad chilly last night, true enough, but not near cold enough to freeze the water lines in the kitchen.

When I heard son-in-law Bill's alarm going off, I called up to him that maybe he best get up then (rather than laying in bed, hitting the snooze alarm as he always does) because there was a problem in the kitchen he would need to check on before going to work. He got up, I explained the issue and he went to the basement to see if he could detect any problems there. All was clear!

He looked under the sink, saw nothing wrong there either. Fiddling around with both faucets gained no additional information save the fact the hose would work although the spigots were both dry as bone.

He grumbled as he left the house for work that he would have to tear the thing apart tonight after work and so, Mandy and the kids and I have been without water in the kitchen all day today now.

Robert, my older daughter's fiance returned a call to us this morning after Mandy had called Carrie to tell her to have Robert call and see if he had any ideas as to what the problem might be. Luckily, he works for a building supply place and is very knowledgeable with respect to carpentry, wiring and yes, plumbing! After I told him what had happened, what Bill had checked and found (nothing), he said he figured there is a blockage someplace in the faucet before the water splits off to the hot and cold sides. He figured he could walk Bill through the issues there tonight on the phone and if not, he would be up then after he got off work at 7:30 to fix the system. But at least, we did have water in the kitchen by using the hose.

Well, that held true till about noon when I went to heat up some soup and found that the hose was no longer working either then. And, by that time, of course, the number of dirty dishes on the counter had begun to pile up and my thought process for what to fix for supper was getting challenged too cause everything seemed to need water and I sure as heck didn't want to have to carry water from the bathroom out to the kitchen in order to cook supper.

So, here it is now, close to time for Bill to get home from work. He'll have to pick the kids up on his way home too at the sitter's place since I am not yet up to par to care for them again just yet and who knows how long it will take him then to rip the faucet apart, fix the problem and get things back together again. Gonna be a dry spell here for a few hours tonight obviously.

Ok, this doesn't rank as a major catastrophe or anything like that, just what I would term as a "PITA" (Pain in the ass) type occurance. But it sure does show how much our lives today revolve around the convenience of running tap water in a very handy location, doesn't it.

Actually, the main thing running really "dry" for me right now is to kickstart the brain as to what to try to fix for supper tonight. I still haven't come up with any ideas that sound feasible to me to try to fix without the convenience of hitting the tap that I am so very accustomed to doing while cooking.

Any suggestions for fixing a "waterless" meal, please feel free to toss them my way in case I may need some ideas sometime again in the future.

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