T-Day preparedness

Getting ready for Thanksgiving and luckily my chef husband is taking care of our obligatory dish for the family get together. We are headed to Diamond Bar to Noah's dad and (step)mom's house. Supposedly there are 20 people showing up. That is one crazy thing I learned early about Noah is that his family is large and extended. Every get together includes Noah's step family. I don't mean this in a bad way, it's actually kind of fun coming from a small family. And Noah's dad has been married to Maureen for over 25 years and she has children who have had children. The only irritating thing is that they are fully vested in the turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, etc. I'm over that now. I'd rather be eating squabs and foie gras. Noah told his dad that we weren't going to show up if there was store bought pies. That's a tall order to fill with 20 people coming over. Noah made homeade corn bread and will roast vegetables for a cornbread stuffing.

I meant to get some "chores" taken care of today for our dinner party on Sunday. I woke up at my usual time (11am) and Noah had just gotten back from working at the farmers market. I offered to make him coffee and when I went to the sink, I realized the sink wasn't draining. Noah said, "Oh yeah, I noticed that last night." What? Last night? So here I am with a gigantic plunger trying to get the drain unplugged. Meanwhile, my normally wonderful husband was watching a surf contest on the net. Hello?! The day before Thanksgiving and we have nasty dirty water backing up in our sink! He volunteered (yeah, right) to go to the store and get some Liquid Plumber. Well, guess what folks, Liquid Plumber sucks and is a total no-no. I know, I know, it's made from horrible chemicals that are used for crystal meth manufacturing, but if it was gonna unplug our sink, I was gonna use it. I finally broke down and called the landlord. Help me! He sent over his plumber (Thank you Armen) and they used a motorized "snake" to break through the clog. The plumber lectured me about using Liquid Plumber. He said (In a very thick Latino accent so I hope I understood right), that I should NEVER use Liquid Plumber unless I want to eat away at all my pipes. And if I'm desperate, I should only use it if the drain is running slowly, not completely stopped. What stopped the pipe? I asked but never got an answer. But thank you, Tony the plumber, for showing up at the last minute to help me out!