Our day started out badly... just like Black Friday creep, so too did we experience "Brown Friday" creep... let me explain, Brown Friday is a joking expression that plumbers use to refer to their busiest day of the year, the Friday after Thanksgiving. As you can imagine, with all the cooking of extravagant and greasy foods, Thanksgiving is the one day of the year you are most likely to experience a seriously clogged kitchen drain. Well, true to form, Wednesday night, my kitchen sink clogged terribly. I was already frustrated, but that drain clog was the straw that broke my camel's back. I had to work Wednesday and so I was already tired when I got home intending to finish prepping our Thanksgiving meal.
But when I got home Wednesday, I discovered tragedy had already struck in the kitchen... early Wednesday morning, I'd gotten up to bake our family's traditional holiday dessert, an Old Fashioned Raisin Pound Cake. After spending more than an hour and half just preparing the batter, I got it into the oven just before I had to leave for work. I put my husband Edward in charge of keeping an eye on it and taking it out when it was done. Although I thought I did a good job of explaining how to test it for doneness, I guess I didn't. When I walked into the kitchen and saw the cake, although he thought it looked done, I knew it was terribly under baked and I realized it was ruined. Unfortunately, there was no time to make another as you must make it at least 30 to 40 hours before you want to serve it. Against all hopes, I did try to bake it some more, but all I got was a cake burnt on the outside and still raw on the inside. In the end, I threw it away and lamented the loss of the $10 worth of ingredients that had gone into its making.
But I didn't throw in the towel on Wednesday night until I went to make the potato salad and the sink clogged as I ground the peelings in the waste disposal. At that point, I couldn't take anymore, it had been a long and difficult day at work and I was exhausted. So I left everything alone, took a bath and went to bed, knowing job one on Thanksgiving morning would be unclogging that kitchen drain. The funny and ironic thing about it was that earlier Wednesday, I had read an article online about "Brown Friday" and I realized as I went to bed that it had been an omen of things to come later that same day.
Clearing the clogged drain, proved to be very difficult. It involved taking apart the drain line in the basement just to be able to maneuver the drain snake to the area of the clog, an awkward bend just beneath the basement floor where grease had built up in the pipe over time and where those potato peels had firmly lodged themselves. In all, it took me nearly two hours yesterday morning to get the water flowing again so that I could prepare our meal. During this time, my husband who is very inquisitive, inquired, "What are you doing?" And the look of obvious frustration on my face said it all, he wisely stayed out of my way until he heard the water running again.
But despite the headaches, in the end, I got everything prepared and Edward for the first time, set our holiday table and created a lovely floral centerpiece for us to enjoy. I made a batch of gourmet cupcakes to replace the Raisin Cake and as our home filled with the smells of wonderful and familiar holiday foods, and the sounds of family, I realized how thankful I am for my life and my husband who loves me and our freedoms and the acceptance of our families that we enjoy. Thanksgiving was indeed just that, those few little frustrations I had endured helped me to remember how much I take for granted sometimes, and I realized how blessed I really am (and thankful I'm a good plumber :-).
It's better when your married...
"Fear Eats the Soul"
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