How'd That Get in There?

About a month or so ago our garbage disposal wasn’t working right. It would grind things up, but then you could leave it running for 10 minutes and it still seemed like something was in there. After several days of this, I got so fed up that I grabbed a wooden spoon, and stuck the handle down into the drain. I fished around for a few minutes until I hit resistance – I pulled the spoon out, and attached to the end of it was a dish rag with some very frayed ends. This was not our dish rag. I was so confused, but then figured that it must belong to the cleaning lady. I’m not sure if she was done with it and figured she’d just grind it up or if it found its way there by accident. At any rate, once the rag was removed, the garbage disposal was back in business, humming smoothly. Then yesterday afternoon I was chopping some veggies for dinner. I scooped all the peels and stubs into the garbage disposal and flipped the switch. For the past 3 days or so the garbage disposal has not been right, again. It has been making a similar grumbling noise, even when empty. I finally had enough of it, so I grabbed my trusty wooden spoon and went fishing again. It didn’t take me long this time before I felt something. I reached in and pulled out a silicone baby bottle nipple! I’m not sure how long it had been down there, but it had turned from clear into a sort of ginger ale color (amazingly enough though, it did not appear to be torn or shredded in any way!). Gross! How’d that get in there??? Who knows, but the cleaning lady was there again on Monday…All of this sort of reminds me of the party Josh & his roommates once had in college. I don’t think I was at this party, but he’s told me about it before. Apparently it was a really good party, but the next morning, one of the toilets was broken. So they called the apartment management, who sent maintenance out to look at it. When the maintenance guy got there, he found orange peels in the tank (coincidentally, they had served some “fruit punch” at the party, complete with fresh fruit garnishes). He approached the guys about the “problem”, and asked if they knew how orange peels had gotten into the toilet. “No sir – we have no idea…how odd!” they said, with their golden halos twinkling in the sunlight. So the maintenance guy wrote on his form “Found orange peels in toilet. Residents have no idea how they got there.”

Here’s an update on Herschel. By the way, thanks Melissa for the Today Show thing – I found the article and will read it shortly (I’ve also called the vet for some advice – he may be going on some drugs soon, depending on what our other options are). Last night a really bad storm blew through as we were finishing up dinner. At some point during all of this, Herschel ran upstairs again. I’m not exactly sure when he went up – I wasn’t really paying attention. But around 7:20 Josh took Zachary upstairs for his bath. I stayed downstairs with Liam, who had fallen asleep in his high chair. He was so peaceful that I didn’t want to wake him up. Then I heard Josh call for me to come up right away. He hardly ever has that sort of urgency in his voice to me, so I knew something was wrong. I go upstairs and he & Zachary are in the computer room. He says “Look what Herschel has done now!” – I’m thinking he has pooped under the desk. Worse – he somehow managed to get a bunch of cords & wires from the computer wrapped around his neck and he couldn’t get out. The computer was off, and the only reason Josh went in there was because he heard Herschel wheezing and gasping in there. Thankfully he probably wasn’t trapped like that for very long. But it made me wonder what might have happened if that storm had come through during the day. After a few hours he probably would have panicked and tried to get himself free. This would have probably ripped all the computer stuff off the desk and possibly done physical damage to Herschel around his neck (or worse). So we definitely need to do something – it’s getting out of control. Our new plan (at least temporarily) is to leave that door closed all the time. Except that we just realized we left the door open today. With storms predicted for today, I’m going to be paranoid at the first sound of thunder that he’s going to get himself trapped again.