Last night I was hand washing some of the pans that are too big to fit in the dishwasher or are just not dishwasher safe. I had a few minutes before I needed to start dinner and figured I would just get it done. That’s what I thought. What it really ended up being was a clogged kitchen sink, both sides. Both sides of the sink were half full with water and it was not draining. To make matters worse, running the garbage disposal made the other side back up worse until you turned the disposal back off. Great!
This really was no surprise. We had been babying it along for a few weeks. It had gotten really really bad in the past couple of weeks. The garbage disposal had also started making more noise and putting off way more vibration than normal. It started that around the time that the sink drains started running slower again. This is an ongoing problem with the drains, sometimes they are slow. I will not mention how many bottles of drain solutions we’ve used to keep it running.
So here I am at the sink and sent Lance to go get the plunger. We were going to get serious with the sink drains and tell it all what it was going to do regardless of what it wanted to do. Lance brings me the plunger and he stands there and watches as I proceed to get water splashes on myself, the counter, and floor. He stood there, back a little ways so he would not suffer the same fate of falling victim of the water splashes. From time to time he would step up and look in the sink and say, “nope, it is still plugged.” In all fairness, he did not laugh at me…
What I heard was this: “You need to call Mr. Rooter because he could fix all your plumbing problems.”
I about died laughing. It made the fact that my sink was not draining almost tolerable! Not quite, but almost. Now stating the obvious wouldn’t surprise me from this child, however, he stated very clearly (1) a name brand service in town and (2) what they could provide me with. The amazing part is that (1) he remembered the brand name and (2) he was able to tell me what they could do for me almost word for word from the commercial.
So is this a sign that he is watching too much TV? I am not so sure. I mean, he asks all the time if you can turn his “commercial” back on when what he really wants is for you to turn Sponge Bob back on for him. He hasn’t quite grasped the conceptual difference between a commercial and an actually show. He has, however, fallen victim to the whole commercial thing. I guess the commercial producers should take great comfort in that their work has done its job and convinced my 5 year old that his mother should call Mr. Rooter.
See it doesn’t sound so funny or amazing right now, but when you have this little even follow another incident earlier in the week it all just makes you shake your head and hope that the commercial producers know that they have done their job and done it well.
Ben went to the doctor because he wasn’t feeling well. Nothing major, just a minor sinus infection. I went to get his antibiotics for him from the pharmacy. While I was there, I also picked up the nasal saline and Mucinex D that the doctor also recommended. Not a big deal.
So I get home and I hand Ben the box of Mucinex D and other stuff. I ask him when he had taken his last dose of Sudafed because he could not take it with the Mucinex (because of the D part). He said he hadn’t taken any in several hours. Great.
I am not sure how much time had passed, but Ben finally took his medicine. As he’s opening the Mucinex, Lance stands there watching him. I am not sure why he was watching to begin with but it could be in the sheer fact that daddy rarely takes medicine. Who knows. The point is, the words that come out of this child’s mouth just made me take pause and think to myself, “That’s my smart little boy.” Yes, proud mom moment.
What I heard was this (Lance is talking to daddy): “That’s Mucinex that will help your mucous in here [pointing to chest] and help with your sinuses [pointing to cheeks] and congestion and…”
I can’t remember the rest of what he said. I was stuck on the mucous in your chest and congestion in your sinuses. Now the fact that he could even recall the word mucous by itself is amazing to me, but only could he (1) identify the brand name product, but he could (2) tell daddy exactly what it was going to help him with.
So, that’s 2 things in 1 week that Lance has seen on TV that he was more than happy to share his knowledge with us.
For what it is worth, we did call Mr. Rooter today to unclog the drain. Lance was just happy that the problem was being solved. He was more than happy to share his knowledge about drains and pipes and whatnot with the worker. I won’t knock the child for that. I simply can’t complain. The guy fills out the invoice with all the itemized stuff and he sits there looking at the paper for a minute, listening to Lance talk his ear off about the finer working details of pipes and how it would work if there was a crack in the pipe. Oh yeah, he was carrying on.
The plumber was very nice about it. He then looks up at me and says, “I’ll tell you what I am going to do, instead of a 30 or 90 day warranty I am going to give you a 1 time trip with no charge warranty so if the drain clogs up again at any time we will come back out at no charge and clean it again.” Now let me just say that the $20 coupon I had or this nice warranty did not take the initial sting out of amount of today’s service, but it is still a nice gesture because snaking a pipe 70 feet is not exactly cheap. At any rate, my kitchen sink drains are now running smoothly (again). I have a nice warranty if I need it. And Lance has learned the value of paying attention to commercials. It doesn’t get any better than that, right?
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