Toilets and Sinks

This blog entry is dedicated to my father, my future husband, all single non-fix-it-people, everywhere, and Greg Stirling. Yesterday my sink wasn't draining well. After careful inspection, I unscrewed the drain, pulled it out, and stuck toothpicks down there to try and remove whatever was clogging it. I wasn't able to pull much out, so I figured it was just too deep and I'd need to find an alternative solution. Well, I'm pretty sure that's what Drain-o is for, but didn't know if they had anything like that, down here. I know I could have asked somebody, but I decided I'd try one more thing, first. So I took a guess at the most abrasive cleaning product I owned, thinking that maybe if I poured lots of down the sink, its very harshness would eat away at whatever was down there. Well, my sister dumped all of my real cleaning products when she was down here and replaced them with Shakley, and even I could surmise that natural corn and sunflower oils weren't going to cut it. So I settled on Clorox. Well, there I was, pouring bleach down my sink, when I felt my socks getting wet. I looked down, and to my horror, bleach was rushing out of cupboard! Forgetting the typical purpose of this abrasive cleaning agent (and thereby not taking off my jeans, first), I immediately got down on my hands and knees to investigate the problem under my sink, which I discovered to be a pipe that was no longer attached to the sink basin. It had a rubber ring around it that looked like it was supposed to suction on, or something, so I tried pushing really hard to make it stick, but to no avail. Concluding that the bleach must have eaten away at the adhesive, or something, I decided it was time to call in the troops. Looked apologetically at Rosie the Rivitor flexing her muscles on my wall, I admitted defeat and called up Greg Stirling. Surprisingly, the fix-it-man-hero-of-all-single-missionaries-in-Villarrica didn't really know what to tell me, except to call one of our church's elders, Elvio, who was a plumber.

So today Elvio came over. While waiting for him to come, I decided to clean my bathroom sink, because I thought I may have him look at that, too, as it also seemed to be draining slowly. Well, whenever I clean my sink, I just go ahead and clean my toilet at the same time. But today, when I lifted up the seat, I was horrified to find that it was very dirty. How embarrassing! And in my defense, I really do clean my toilet, regularly; I have too many visitors not to. There are events that occure in all of our lives which undermine our greatest attempts to maintain pristine undersides of our toilet seats. I, however, am without men or little boys in my life to regularly leave the seat up and in so doing, inadvertently alert me of such events, should they occure. Anyway, Elvio rang my bell before I'd had time to use the brush in the basin, so I just closed the lid, left the blue stuff in there (because I was going to finish the job after he left), and answered my door. Well, the sink fixing, itself, was a humiliating affair that only a single woman living in a foreign country can fully comprehend. I showed him the drain (which was still laying on the counter), and tried to explain how I'd dumped the bleach down and somehow pulled the pipe out from the sink basin. As another side note, you know how stupid you feel when trying to explain to an auto mechanic what's wrong with your car, when you don't know the words for all that stuff under the hood? Well, try it in another language. I'd tried to prepare myself by looking up words I knew I'd need, beforehand, and writing them on my white board for quick reference, but I still forgot some and sounded even more blundering helpless woman idiotlike than what I already was. Can you even imagine? So without going into great detail, I guess you're supposed to clean the pipes under your sink, somewhat regularly, and you shouldn't need to take out the drain, itself. I don't know if that's a general homeowner thing all over the world, or just here, but I hadn't done it. So there I sat while one of our church elders cleaned 18 months worth of my gunk out of the pipes. How humbling. Then, as if the whole ordeal hadn't been bad enough, he then showed me the solution to my leaking pipe problem: screw the drain back in. I guess the pipe is held up by the screw that I'd removed with the drain. I was SO embarrassed. Then Elvio asked where my bathroom was so that he could dump the dirty sink water crap (no puns intended). Oh my goodness, I can't even begin to express the depth of gratitude I felt to the good Lord, in that moment, as I lifted my freshly cleaned seat to pour the sink water down. I will conclude this blog with an excerpt from my prayer journal, tonight:

"Oh, Lord, You are so gracious and kind. There was absolutely no reason why You would have had me clean my toilet just before Elvio came, except to spare me embarrassment upon embarrassment. Oh, how You love me. Thank You. Thank You. Thank You. Oh, how I love You. Thank You."