9/13/05

* * * For dinner last night, we had pizza pork hoagies. EXCEPT! We didn’t actually have PIZZA pork hoagies, we had BBQ pork hoagies. Basically, I followed the pizza pork hoagies recipe for the most part, cutting the pork into strips and marinating it in italian dressing. But then, after cooking the pork, when it was time to assemble everything, instead of using pizza sauce on the hoagie roll, I used BBQ sauce. I didn’t use any mozzarella, heated up the pork-laden hoagie rolls, and after I took them out of the oven, topped them with vinegar coleslaw. It was Fred‘s idea, and I’ve gotta give the man his due – it was really pretty damn good. I think we’re going to have them again next week.

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Currently reading: The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler. With a name like that, it’s gotta be good – and so far, 60 pages in, it is. Recently finished: Shakespeare’s Christmas, Girls in Pants, and Just a Geek. Not a bad one in the bunch. I’m continuing to really enjoy the Lily Bard series.
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I need some advice, people. My kitchen sink smells like I’ve been using the garbage disposal to grind up nasty long-dead rotten things. Nothing I do seems to help – I tried baking soda and vinegar, I tried running a bunch of ice cubes through the garbage disposal, I tried cutting up lemons and running THOSE through the garbage disposal. Everything works short-time, but nothing seems to work for longer than a few hours. The smell coming from my sink is just horrible and I hate it. I know someone out there has the answer, so please help me and my stinky sink, won’t you?
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If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like being married to a man who seems to be a 12 year-old boy stuck in an old man’s body, this might give you some idea.
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It seems like all of a sudden the kittens – Rambo, especially – have gone from little and round to long and lanky. I guess they’re not babies anymore. They’re adolescents! They also want to be let the hell out of their room as soon as they hear anyone moving around. Some mornings they hear Fred coming upstairs after working out, and they start howling. Other mornings, as soon as they hear me walk by their door or start laundry, they start howling. What’s funny is that not only do they want out of their room, but the other cats want them out of there, too. Mister Boogers mostly wants a playmate, and the other cats just want to get in there and eat some Science Diet Kitten food. They both – but especially Rambo – see Mister Boogers go outside (I’ll let him out if he makes it clear that he wants out by batting at the blinds on the back door and being a general pain in the ass) and want to go out, too. Usually if I open the door for Mister Boogers to go out, I have to catch Rambo so he doesn’t go outside as well. They also get really excited when I open the cat door for Mister Boogers to come inside. I open the cat door, let Mister Boogers in, then close it again, and they run over to sniff at the cat door, like they’re thinking “I KNOW there’s a way out of here…” Our cats, at least, tend to run away when someone rings the doorbell, but Rambo and Jodie prefer to make a break for it. So far we’ve been lucky. I hope our luck holds up! I put the cat bed on the floor, because I just couldn’t stand the sound of Rambo sucking on it. I’m not trying to make him stop, I just don’t want him doing it right in my ear, you know? He’s a loud sucker. Anyway, he “discovered” the bed and immediately climbed in and started sucking. Jodie climbed in after him, and actually tried to make him stop with the sucking – see her paw, under his face? – but to no avail. Judging by the size of her paws, I think Jodie’s going to be a big cat. Mister Boogers and Miz Poo face off. What is it with kitties loving to chew on wet hair? Rambo in the play cube. Rambo does yoga.
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Previously 2004: All I know is that my grandmother’s ashes are NOT going to end up buried in the back yard next to Tubby – that I can guarantee you. 2003: No entry. 2002: “Plus,” he said with great seriousness, “I’m really hungry.” 2001: So, this is how they suck you in. 2000: WHEN WILL THE SUFFERING END???]]>

35 thoughts on “9/13/05”

  1. I love your new website, if for no other reason than there is now a little picture of you next to Bitchypoo on my favorites list so if I’m drunk I don’t even have to be able to read to click on your website. You are so smart!

  2. Hi! I would like to second that request for help on the stinky sink….mine has been rank lately too…
    Thanks!

  3. There is normally a rubber piece in btwn the sink and the disposal. It can be removed. It probably needs to be cleaned. Bacteria and goop gets on it and it will smell. Try and see if that helps any.

  4. I would try cleaning the underside of the rubber garbage disposal drain flap doohickey with vinegar. Usually if I can’t make the sink smell better with the stuff you mentioned, it turns out to be the rubber thing that needs deodorized.

  5. Hey Robyn. On the garbage disposal/sink thing. If you can take that little black rubber thingy (I know there is name for it but I cannot think of it!) off of the drain and soak it in bleach. Then scrub around where it goes, that might help. If the black thingy does not come off then try cleaning the underside of it with a toothbrush and bleach. Good luck!
    Kelli

  6. Ditto what Audri says. Also, put in the plug to stop up the disposal side and fill up the sink with hot water. Turn on the disposal and then remove the stopper. The force of the water will remove any food particles remaining in the disposal or pipes. My plumber also said to run the water frequently down that side of the sink. Good luck.

  10. This reminds me – didn’t you blog a while ago about some upcoming big thing in your life that you would tell us about? Some people thought you might be going back to school. Did you ever say?

  12. Thanks for your suggestions – I can’t see a way to take the black rubber thing out, but I’ll have Fred take a look and see if he can figure it out!
    KS: Honestly, I don’t remember writing anything like that. Was it recently?
    Laura: I agree! 🙂

  14. The black rubber thing should just pull right out. I had a similar problem with a stanky smell and I used a regular drain cleaner like drano and that cleaned out the pipes and the smell with it!

  16. Two thumbs up from me as well for Disposer Care, which I buy at my local Wal-Mart. Here’s a website I found where you can get a free sample!
    Disposer Care
    And Cat News is one of funniest things I’ve seen in a while – just quoting it makes my husband lose it. “I’m nuuuude…”

  17. Hi Robyn,
    Suggestion for your html stripping…have you ever used the Dreamweaver – Edit – Find and Replace – Replace All ..feature? It’s a real lifesaver! You can tell it to replace all in just the one file, or in a folder etc. Remember to select “source code” so that it looks at the actual html code. So an example would be.. Find: img src=”images/picture.jpg” width=”500″ height=”337″ and the Replace would be blank (to remove any picture references) or img src=”new directory/ etc… make sense? BTW..it works for any text or code or portions thereof…Good Luck!

  18. I agree on cleaning the rubber stopper thingy if you can get it out, but also, a whole bunch of good old fashioned bleach works wonders. Any time mine gets like that, I just dump a whole gallon down there. Dump in about 1/4 of the bottle, let it sit ten or so minutes, repeat until the bottle’s gone, then run hot water down there for about a minute.
    Watch, someone’s going to tell me I’m eating my pipes away or something. Heh.

  19. Kindly ask that geek hubby of yours to write you a perl script to strip your dreamweaver docs. Sounds like it is doable! And I am sure he will LOVE me for suggesting it!
    ~ fella nerd!

  20. I don’t know if my rubber disposal thing comes out or not, haven’t tried. I usually just kinda turn it inside out and scrub it.
    Notetab (best text editor ever) will strip HTML tags for you, too. It’s at notetab.com I think. I have the free version, Notetab Light, and I love it to bits.

  21. Yvonne: I couldn’t get it to work for some reason, but I opened the entries in notepad and used find and replace there, and it worked like a CHARM. Thank you so much for the suggestion! I only have 26 more months to do… UGH!
    Katie: He tried, god love ’em, but the entries came through kind of messed up, and I can really only ask the man to spend so much time on my crappy old entries, you know?

  22. I always use oranges in my disposal instead of lemons, they seem to get rid of the stink better.. I also throw some bleach down there if it is particularly smelly.

  23. The best thing I’ve ever done with my garbage disposal was get the fucking thing yanked out and have a regular sink put in its place. No matter what I tried, all mine ever did was get clogged up and smell like raw sewage anyway. I don’t miss it one single bit. Hefty bags are good enough for my trash. heh!

  24. Katie: Kindly ask that geek hubby of yours to write you a perl script to strip your dreamweaver docs.
    The script I wrote to do her HTML is actually a bash script, and a couple of little C programs (I can read Perl, but not write it too well). The problem it had before was an over-agressive call to sed (which was stripping out too much). I can use that to clean the normal HTML, but the image links are all for her to do because I’m too lazy to write something for that. 🙂 What she didn’t mention is that she changed page layouts every few months back then, which makes it hard for one script to clean up.

  25. Robyn, please help: I went back and re-read your entry from this date in 2002, particularly, the funny “I’m really hungry” conversation btwn you & Fred. I STILL don’t get it. I didn’t get it when you first wrote it years ago, and now that I’ve read it again, I just can’t understand the humor, and I REALLY REALLY WANNA! Please help me join in the laughter. 🙂

  26. There’s this “stuff” (It has live enzymes in it, if that helps at all) you can buy in home improvement stores. You mix two ounces with a cup or so of water, pour it in the drains before bed and it EATS all the crud that’s built up in the pipes.

  29. You know i think Jodie has a lot of Maine Coon in her…i have a Maine Coon (the most wonderful cats in the world) and Jodie has a lot of the same attibutes. The hair tufts coming from the ears, the tufts of hair coming pads of their feet. She is going to grow into some beautiful fluffy hair too i can see it beginning. Her tail will get really fluffy too. My Maine Coon is 9 months old and his weight 15 pounds..predicted to go around 20 pounds. They are most fun cats you could ever have…they are just big clowns. They are not fully grown until they are 4 years old…..you should keep her…they are not know to have many physical problems…in fact my cat has never been sick

  31. Elizabeth in NC: What’s so funny about it is that he said “Plus, I’m really hungry” just out of nowhere. We hadn’t been talking about anything at all for him to suddenly add “Plus, I’m really hungry” to. It was an out of the blue sort of thing. You maybe just had to be there. 🙂
    Aloo: Thank you!
    Mazey: Thanks for the link; I thought she might have some Maine Coon in her! 🙂

  32. The smell is coming from the topside (if there was a ceiling or roof) of the garbage holder. I have reached into mine with an SOS pad and scrubbed the area, this is not an easy thing to do, there are hard plastic edges that can cut your hand. I have tried all the suggested remedies, but nothing seems to reach that area. Good luck. (you should unplug the disposal before trying this)

  33. I’ve never had issues with my garbage disposals, but I think it’s because my mom taught me to use a toilet brush (I have one just for the sink.) Coat it with a paste of Ajax or Borax and water. Just shove the sucker down in there and scrub away – and the best part is you never have to touch any of it!

  34. April – thanks for the free sample. It’s good to try before you buy.
    I wipe all that scummy stuff off with a paper towel and then put some baking soda in. You can’t run water in the sink for awhile though. It helps the smell for a little bit. I love Shayne’s idea.

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