kitchen sink – whatmamathinks

I wasn’t laughing at 7:30 am this morning. After complaining to literally everyone whole week about how tired I was, I finally made it to the weekend. Friday night (after my sink got fixed) was glorious. I came back from work, made a quick dinner, grunted hello to Ryan (and he grunted a ‘what’s up back), settled down to watch Gilded Age on HBO. I woke up on Saturday morning with a to-do list. But first and foremost on the list was a refreshing long walk. I laced up my sneakers, did some stretches, debated whether I wanted to listen to music or just get lost in my thoughts (always a dangerous proposition) and then went downstairs to go out through the basement. I landed in water. Yes, my whole basement was flooded. My first thought, interestingly enough, was an irrational anger towards my partner, the poor guy. Things always happen when he travels. I just had the plumber fix the blockage in my kitchen sink the day before and now my basement is flooded!! Not just water but entire gunk from the blockage was on my basement floor. The rugs in front of the tv was sopping wet. At that point I did not know where the water came from, there was no leak in any of the pipes. I came upstairs, woke Sahana and Ryan up, took the heavy wet rugs outside to dry in the sun with their help. Sent a thank you to the universe for blessing us today with a scorcher – yup, you read that right. I am so thankful today was 100 degree F so my rugs, thousand towels and two mops that I used to mop water from my basement actually dried.

The same plumber who thought of his friend’s mother when he saw me, came back. He discovered there was a bigger blockage in the main pipe which he snaked out. I ran the kitchen sink and the disposal to make sure there was no water or goop rushing out in the basement. I also heard how much money the guy makes in this profession and all about his personal life. I will encourage Ryan to consider the plumbing profession if he wants to make it big in life in terms of money. He is a very friendly guy but I was outwardly friendly, silently seething because I had a ton of water to mop in the basement. He said he won’t charge me as if he is doing me a favor. I said he shouldn’t charge me because this was a recall. Anyway, I did not have to pay but I did have to listen to various stories of his life.

Sahana had work today but she brought me coffee from Dunkin Donuts before leaving for work. Ryan followed the plumber around with me and nodded his head seriously at all the technical talks of blockage and snaking. He took his role as the man of the house very seriously. Anyway, after the plumber left, my real work began. By the time the water and awful gunk from basement was cleaned up, I was done for. I wrote to my husband a long message about how everything was awful, how hard I had to work and so on and so forth. He responded with a sad emoji to my long, woeful story and promptly followed that with his Wordle completion score. He is definitely sleeping on the couch when he returns.

I kept checking my basement all day. Either I went down or sent Ryan down to check. It has remained dry. Nervously, I did a load of laundry but stood downstairs just in case the water started spouting from the pipes. The water remained where it is supposed to remain – inside the pipes. We ordered Afghani food after Sahana came back from work and the three of us laughed as we ate. Ryan is big into investment, now that he is earning money and his voice rose in excitement as he educated his mother on his research about index funds and S&P 500 charts. His mother is clueless about investments and should really take a class. At one point, when his voice started bellowing as he got very invested (see what I did there?) in his topic of investment, the stereotypical librarian in me shushed him (most public librarians don’t shush anymore, it is truly a stereotype 🙂 ). After dinner, Sahana and I went for a walk which was lovely.

It was a good end to a bad day. There was laughter and that is, sometimes, just enough.

I have written before that my love language is feeding. Now that my family does not care for the food I cook, I cook for my coworkers. On Wednesday night after work, I chopped onions, pureed tomatoes, made ginger garlic paste and soaked vatana (dried green peas) to make ghugni, a popular street food of Bengal, for my coworkers.

On Thursday morning I woke up energized. I was ready to cook all morning before work. I had also picked up a beautiful eggplant from the farmer’s market. I planned to make baingan bharta as well. I had my morning coffee, rinsed the dried peas and transferred them to an instant pot to boil. I set the timer at 10 minutes. While the peas boiled, I peeled the roasted eggplant and then picked up the vacuum to clean. When I opened the instant pot lid, I discovered the peas were overboiled and completely useless for the dish I had planned to make. Fortunately, I had cans of garbanzo beans in the pantry and I substituted.

As I was doing the dishes and drying them, I knocked down a glass jar which broke in pieces scattering glass everywhere on my kitchen floor. That involved picking up glass, sweeping the floor and then mopping it too so that no stray glass could sneakily cut our feet.

Work day went as usual without any angry customers. My friends enjoyed the food. My coworker and I brainstormed for class ideas. The conversation went like this “And we could do….”. “YES!! And then we could do….!” It was quite funny.

I came home after 9 pm thinking, “alright the morning was bad but the rest of the day turned out fine.” And then Sahana exclaimed, “What is this?” She was pointing to the kitchen sink. It was filled with dirty water. The water would not drain. There was clearly some blockage. I spent the next half hour emptying dirty water from the sink and pouring it in a bucket to throw outside. Then I called the plumber. Sahana canceled her plans to stay home for the plumber so I could go to work on time. Ryan was not helpful at all. He went to bed because of his practice at an ungodly hour in the morning.

It is Friday morning, I am waiting for the plumber. And of course, Sean is traveling. Things happen when he travels. On top of all that, I did not hear from Sean the whole day!

But here is a picture of the ghugni and baingan bharta. I will have you know, I cracked a real coconut for the first time in my life after watching You Tube video on “how to crack a coconut” and used fresh coconut meat for this dish. I felt very “from the scratch”.