I wrote a post awhile back about my sink. The one with duct tape and bungee cords, remember? Anyway, over the past few months, this sink has taken on an almost metaphorical role in my life. When I moved in, it never even occurred to me to look at the plumbing in my house. Problems have since surfaced, such as the fact that some of my plumbing was put in backwards. I’ve dealt with or fixed most of it, but the sink has been a persistent problem since the first month.
If I’m honest, this sort of mirrors my relationship with my rental house. When I moved in, I moved from an apartment complex, and the idea of having a house seemed positively luxurious. However, now after a year, the house frequently seems to be falling apart around me, all of the blinds get stuck, and I’ve realized that having neighbors is only fun if they are quiet and nice and don’t work third shift jobs.
Well, today I decided I wanted to love my house again; it’s been a year of positive life change for me and I wanted to add my house habits to that list. So I put on some old clothes, and decided to clean the place from top to bottom until it was pretty and sparkling and all of the bad plumbing and neighbor demons had been exorcised. My first stop was the kitchen, to wash all the dishes in the sink. Which would have been an easy and happy task, except:
The damn sink has started leaking again.
I turned on the faucet, and water started spilling into the cabinet below, and then onto my bare feet. Soapy, gross, slimy water. I considered several options, one being kicking the pipes out with my bare feet and then collapsing in a heap on the floor crying, because really, how the hell can I run a business and not fix a leaking sink in a year? What kind of human being does that make me?
But then I had one of those little lightbulb moments that almost never happen when you need them, but today I got lucky. I’ve spent a year fighting this thing; with washers and whatever weird little circular things go with them, with duct tape, with bungee cords, by calling the landlord, but I realized that there was one thing I’d never done before.
I went to the bathroom closet and got a bucket. And I stuck it under the sink, and did my dishes.
And all of the sudden, that horrible sink monster who had spent the year telling me that no matter what I did I couldn’t really manage my life? It was gone.
While this may seem like a very strange post to you, my lovely blog community, I feel like I’ve been part of an epic battle and won today. It’s funny how the small things can take over our brains and serve as reminders of really negative things and undermine our actions. At least today, I got rid of one of those in my life, and I hope that you all can too.
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