Drained

How quickly a mood can change from positive to negative. What began as a promising Saturday morning turned into an afternoon of frustration and downright crabbiness because of one little bathroom drain.

I awoke this morning to beautiful blue skies, ready to clean the house, catch up on schoolwork, and enjoy an afternoon walk with my dog. Things were going along smoothly for a while: I worked on a slide show/movie for our class’s chapel presentation and started cleaning the house. I vacuumed/dusted the living room, bedroom, and T.V. room.

Then I reached the bathroom. I remembered that the sink drain has been draining slowly for a while, most likely clogged up with hair, and decided to quickly clean the drain before doing the rest of the bathroom. All I have to do is unhook the drain stopper, pull out the hair, and reattach the stopper. It will just take a couple minutes. And that’s when things began to change. I got the stopper out; no problem. Cleaned the stopper and cleared out the hair from the drain; again, easy job. And then I looked down the drain. And saw a big clump of hair (I think) way at the bottom. I couldn’t reach it, even with a piece of wire, so I decided to remove the drain trap underneath to clean it out. However, it was so tight I couldn’t get it off. I couldn’t even get it off with a pipe wrench, although after several tries I noticed the top edge starting to crack, so I finally decided to stop (after hitting it a few times with the side of the wrench and letting out a couple good yells, just to make myself feel better – No, I don’t have a temper problem). Extremely frustrating! It then took a few tries to get the stupid drain stopper back on correctly, but the water did go down much quicker than before, so maybe it will be all right.

Anyway, my decision to take just a few minutes to fix the bathroom sink drain turned into 45 minutes and a total change of attitude about my day. Anger at myself because I couldn’t do something as simple as take apart a drainpipe and anger at the drain itself for being so tight (and clogged in the first place) made me feel useless and unmotivated to do anything else. So my kitchen floor is still un-mopped, next week’s lesson plans are still untouched, we never got out for a walk (the sky turned cloudy anyway), and I am in a bad mood with no idea how to snap out of it.

I guess the moral might be Slow drains are better than trying to fix them yourself or Stick to the day’s original plans. I don’t know. I just wish I could get back to the good mood I had this morning.