Making Lemonade (or Apple Pie, as the case may be)

Here is the Before shot. 24 of these suckers in the bottom drawers of the fridge for way too long.
I stayed up way too late, but the smile on Dylan's face at breakfast was so worth it.

"This is the best apple pie I have ever had, Mama. Can I have more, and more?"

The Old Blogs

http://emilylowpp.blogspot.com

I liken people with chronic illness, physical or otherwise, to the frogs who endure being boiled alive because the water temperature is turned up so slowly that they adapt. Topics include healing, parenting, spirituality, medicine, co-dependency, disability, adventure, growth, nutrition, management, who knows!

http://lowfamilyblog.blogspot.com

Our Colombian family adventures dating from 2006.

In which I do the Honey Do

First, I took off the pea trap.

Somehow it seemed too simple that the plunger might solve all my problems - problems which had been mounting for weeks now.

Taking off the pea trap forced me to confront a few things:

1. I always forget Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey. But my hands seem to remember without my brain. Maybe I should remember this more often and trust them.

2. Dirty sink hair, especially when I have to pull it, dangling in its clumpy, linty, scummy wetness, out of a pipe. It's one of the only things that grosses me out. I edge on gagging just thinking about it, and my tummy is a wreck all over again, my fingers cringing, just writing this.

3. I haven't done something like this in a long time, and it's scary. My confidence that I will complete a task was demolished when I was so sick for so long. There is but a mist of the once-me girl left who confidently purchased a new master cylinder for my Subaru 12 years ago and walked into the Army garage to use the tools and change it and the studded tires out myself.

4. It wasn't that hard, I enjoyed it, and I even turned the water on for kicks to watch it tumble out into the pan that I so smartly placed there just for that purpose. Oh man, what else is there that I have been avoiding that seems so complicated that actually isn't? Have I no excuses left?

Finally,

5. I never needed to do it in the first place. There was not much in there except for some benign black pea trap scum, and the water drained as slowly as ever even when I used a screwdriver to probe around up the pipe.

So, I moved on to the plunger. It was terrifying - all this black gunk exploding in the water - and realizing that it was the toliet plunger in the hand-washing sink. Ach! But the black gunk had come from the sink, which now drained deliciously, satisfyingly, quickly down into my tub (so smartly placed there just for that purpose).

No, I haven't put the stuff back under the sink yet. This is about acheivements, about daring to set foot where this chronically ill housewife has not dared in recent memory.

Putting stuff back under the sink can wait while I bask in my glory, and try not to consider number 4 above.