A Week of Woe

Last week wasn't the best week for me. First off, I had REALLY bad allergies that were very inconvenient for me. It's been about a week, and they're still pestering me. Ah well, at least I'm not puking my guts out, right?

Then, I had this horrible experience that I'd rather not talk about, but afterwards, I felt totally inadequate, and, well, terrible. Terrible is the only word for it.

To top everything off, our kitchen sink wouldn't drain, even after buying a variety of drain cleaners. My pictures this week are of our emergency project of replacing the drain from our kitchen sink. This sink clog was there for over a week! Imagine trying to run your dishwasher, but having to keep two bowls on hand to catch the water, and run them outside to dump, about twenty times per load. It was obnoxious! Plus, our kitchen was filthy for an entire week, because I was afraid to do the dishes! Cooking was a nightmare, because I didn't have the pots and pans that I needed clean! We tried drain cleaners, like I said before. We even tried power blasting. That's a funny story.

So, we used this bladder that you attach to a hose. It fills up the pipe, and makes sure that the water goes down. Well, surprise for us, we forgot that every pipe needs a vent, so the water went up the vent. I knew something was wrong when water was coming off the roof. "Um, Lance, why is there water coming off the roof? Should I turn it off? Honey? What do I do?" A couple of minutes later, he finally says, "Okay, turn it off." So, I turned it off. What happens when there is no pressure making the water go up? That's right! It comes back down. And boy did it ever come back down into our kitchen. Did I mention that we have carpet in our kitchen, which I think is absolutely idiotic? So, our carpet was wet for about two days.

We finally decided that this was going to have to be a pipe replacement job, because when Lance and his brother and dad were replacing our incoming pipes, they noticed that there was a LOT of gunk in the outgoing pipes. So, Lance and his brother, Scott replaced a section of pipe in our basement. Now, our sink drains perfectly! I'm so grateful for Lance and Scott giving me back my kitchen! Oh, and I got all caught up on my dishes, thank goodness!

Lance is cleaning out the pipe with his screwdriver.

I'm holding up a bucket to catch the gunk from the pipe. It's NASTY!!!

That is how clogged the pipe was. You can see why we had to replace it.

EWE!!! Gunk residue on Lance's screwdriver! Gross!

That is what I caught in the bucket. I didn't get ready that day. Oddly enough, the gunk makes me look good. :)

Lance and Scott are holding up the new pipe so that the glue will work. Hooray for the new pipe!

So, it was a pretty woeful week, as you can see. But the weekend was pretty good. I went to the LDS Women's conference on Saturday with my mom. I really enjoyed the talks, and they helped me have a better attitude. Sunday was good, too. I realized that trials happen for a reason, and without them, our faith could never be strengthened.