My newly-finished knitting project needed to be soaked and blocked (stretched into shape), but the sink was dirty. I started to clean it, but found that without any drainage the cleaning wasn't really happening. Derek's sink is this weird flat-bottomed triangular thing with the hot and cold fixtures reversed (even if you KNOW they're reversed it still messes with your head). Out of the question. Tub, no. Kitchen sink, no. I had to do something. So I got the plunger, which is actually kind of new and not disgusting after all, put it in the sink and plunged.

If you ever do this, try to remember that there's a safety drainage thing somewhere else in the sink. If you try to force water through the drain and it won't go -- it WILL come flying out of the safety drain.

Thinking, like an idiot, that one good plunge would undo a year of cloggage, I plunged with confidence. The force of it drove the water straight out of the safety drain and UPWARD, nearly missing my face, and all over the vanity.

The plunging was kind of satisfying, though, because I heard a really disgusting sound and something gray appeared in the sink. Encouraging, no? So I tried it again, and again, and again. I created a little roof over the safety drain with a sponge to avoid the fountain effect and watched as all sorts of stuff came out and into the sink.

The sound and the chunky water was eerily similar to vomiting. I even felt a little queasy. And I have a pretty strong stomach for this stuff. The nauseating thing was that the stuff in the sink was clearly NOT MINE. All I put in the sink is toothpaste and water. There was silver gray stuff at first -- possibly paint from my artist landlord? Slivers of it. LOTS AND LOTS of it. Sometimes it was a little yellow or brown. Then I found a PEBBLE -- but not just any old pebble -- a pebble with bright pink paint on it. Eventually, yellow sand came up. Then cat hair, caulking, possibly kitty litter, human hair, some kind of string, and rust-colored stuff that is hopefully not -- but most likely is -- the inside of the pipe.

At some point I decided I'd had enough plumbing and having that much STUFF out of the pipe meant it would probably drain well enough. Ten minutes of this was heroic enough. There's no reason to endure more than necessary, right? So I grimaced and got the gunk out of the sink. I turned on the water. The sink filled up. No drainage. AT ALL. Despite all of the effort and the stoic endurance of REALLY DISGUSTING stuff, the sink was not cooperating. I realized in complete horror that I had probably just been cleaning the passage between the safety drain and the regular one the whole time. Which, tragically, turned out to be true.

I called in reinforcements. I held the safety drain closed, and Derek plunged mightily. BLACK stuff came up. Derek looked very disturbed. We tried again. It looked like someone might have dumped an entire fish tank in there -- the gunk looked like multi-colored pet store pebbles. During an intermission, I started pulling on some hair poking out and it KEPT GOING. All told, the knotted hair excavated was one-and-a-half-feet long. (Are you still reading??)

The two-pronged attack plan worked. The sink now drains. There's more plunging to do but we're not sure we can take any more of this. We just ate dinner. We both feel sick. And I really won't ever feel quite the same way about that sink again. Which makes me glad that we're going to take a look at a rental tomorrow. Ignorance is bliss, when it comes to your sink's past.