Round three of the “snaking the drain” saga. I had some things to do first. Run to the nearby Piggly Wiggly and pick up the pork picnics I ordered. Make the pork rub. Rub the pork and get it in the smoker. Clean and prepare a bucket of Roma tomatoes and load the dehydrator. Feed the sourdough starter and make a batch of sourdough pancakes with the discard. Clean up the kitchen. THEN I could go downstairs and help Mr. FixIt.

We wanted to run the snake down that drain at least once to make sure it was open. We painted a line on the cable the first day to indicate where the point of resistance was. Tuesday we could get all the way down…fifty feet. But, for some reason, yesterday the cable would not feed beyond that point. We fussed with it…pulled it back…sent it down again…same thing.

That’s when we noticed the cable was all jammed up in the drum. We turned everything off and unplugged the unit for safety, then manually pulled the cable all the way out. Easy peasy. However…as soon as we tried to run it back in, the cable would just flip around and twist on itself. I straightened that thing our three times…no easy feat. We brainstormed different ways to get that cable to go back into the drum but we came up with blanks.

Then, Mr. FixIt said, “We COULD go read the instruction manual.” This, from the man who already read the manual three days ago so I didn’t bother reading it. I can’t say a word, though. I didn’t think of reading the directions either. I went in and read the instructions and within two minutes, I went back downstairs and stuffed that cable in manually. Bingo!

We ran the snake down one more time and it went the entire fifty feet with no resistance. The cat snuck in the basement…again. She bit Mr. FixIt when he picked her up…again. She’s a pistol. It was getting to be a lot of fun at our house and I was hangry. *sigh*

I heated up pizza for supper. I couldn’t believe it was 5:00 already. The pork came out of the smoker at dark and went in the crockpots to slow cook overnight. I used Diet Pepsi this time for the broth. The tomatoes are dehydrating nicely but they take a while here in West Virginia. We had an inch and a half of rain on Tuesday so the sky was hazy with humidity and that will slow the process. 

I fed the sourdough starter before I headed in to write so I can start the bread this morning. I checked on the sauerkraut and it’s coming along…bubbling and fermenting well. I’ll also be canning this smoked pork and putting the dehydrated tomatoes in olive oil to preserve them. I cannot believe it’s Thursday already…time is just getting away from me. 

I think I’m taking tomorrow off!

❤️

“Hard work is worthwhile, but empty talk will make you poor.”

Proverbs 14:23 CEV