Money Pit

Owning a home is like throwing money into a deep dark hole. I call it the money pit. There's always some sort of repair work to do either inside or outside the house. The worst case scenario is when something breaks down, usually when company is about to arrive.

Last week I was expecting 16 people over for dinner. As I was preparing dinner, the garbage disposal decided to cough up discarded vegetable waste and stale, dry cat food. I tried running water into the sink and plunging, but that only made it worse. I was close to sink overflow.

In addition to the insinkerator barf looking disgusting, it didn't smell too great either. "Oh s_ _ t!", I thought, "Now what am I going to do?" Of course it was on a Saturday afternoon and no garbage disposal repairmen were on duty.

I had five options:

1. Take the regurgitated stuff outside and put it in the garden for mulch.
2. Hope that one of my guests knows how to fix garbage disposals.
3. Get drunk.
4. Take everyone out for dinner when they get here.
5. Call everyone, cancel dinner, and reschedule.

I picked option one, and five, while seriously considering number three. Number one was messy, but my crocuses look great. Number five turned out to be very positive. We all ended up going out for dinner with each couple paying their own way.

At dinner we all complained about the responsibilities of home ownership, with a few expletives thrown in for good measure. We all enjoyed a couple bottles of Merlot and lots of laughs.

No one volunteered to fix the garbage disposal. I even offered them a free gift bag of horse pucky for their garden.