There are moments in the course of a day when something happens that has the makings of a disaster. When it spins on the edge of the precipice, undecided. Teetering.

That moment for me and Kyle was yesterday when we decided to dispose of a huge batch of leftover spaghetti noodles. A wiser woman would have chunked them out the back door into the yard and let bugs and birds eat their fill. Not me.

I kerplopped the whole container into the sink with the thought that I could buzz it all up with the garbage disposal. Well. Instead of the noodles easing their way into the disposal and getting chopped into manageably drainable bits, those babies were sucked into the sink faster than I could blink! Just gone! Hm. Unexpected.

I ran the disposal - BZZZZZ!!! But not the satisfying emptying sound I was looking for. To my surprise, the water running into the drain didn't drain. It just filled up and wouldn't budge. Kyle looked at me and said, Why didn't you just put them in the trash? I said, Good question.

After a good 10 minutes of that water level not moving in the slightest, we looked at each other and both envisioned an expensive plumber visit, resulting in him telling us what an idiot I was.

We grabbed the toilet plunger - equally grossed out, but at a loss. After multiple plunges and no results - did we think noodles were going to slurp their way back up to us??? - we abandoned that futile gesture.

Sighing and mentally kicking myself, I peered under the kitchen sink at the U-pipe snaking out of the garbage disposal. My guess was that there was a mass of noodles just jammed up in that pipe. And surely that was something we could handle ourselves, right?

After I laboriously removed all 4,000 items from under the sink, Kyle positioned a little bucket under the pipe, loosened the edges and OUT GUSHED ALL THE WATER IN THE SINK!! Filling the bucket to within a milimeter of the edge! He yelped loudly at the unexpected deluge and I giggled a little hysterically. Handing me the U-pipe, Kyle laughed and said, yep, there's the problem. Wedged like hundreds of earthworms, the noodles were lodged firm. I used a grapefruit knife to coax them out and it was done! A few twists of the turny-thingy and the pipe was reconnected and unclogged.

Note to self: keep the noodles out of the sink. Bad things happen.