DIY a Stay at Home Dad can do: A new disposal

Certain sounds make the heart of men go down to their stomach.  As a father, the ‘grind’ that your disposal makes when a foreign object is in there can present a fork in the road.

We heard that sound recently in the Mojo house.  It was a tiny baby spoon that fell and was shredded into a thousand metallic pieces, we thought.  After the first metal on metal sound, I stopped the disposal, realized that it was too far gone and made the disposal work for it’s money.  Either grind it or die disposal, cause it’s all or nothing in this house.

It fought for a second, then made the smooth noise that it should make.  Ha ha technology, try to outwit me and you lose.  Raw power that I control with a switch will win every time.  Every time that is for two weeks, then it will give up the ghost.  Dead, DRT, no power, juice, mojo gone, slain by a three inch metal spoon.

So, do I call a plumber or purchase one from a home improvement store and do it myself?  With the urging of my wife we decided to continue the emasculation of Daddy Mojo.  My wife is either trying to make me as masculine as Lady Ga Ga or as feminine as Jermaine Jackson.

I was involved in the decision and my laziness did get the better of me.  Having said that, within 30 minutes Alex, a stout man with a slight Russian accent arrived at the door.    I could tell he was the plumber and not Russian mafia because of the plunger on jacket and the business card he gave me.

I spent a couple of days in Moscow.  I remember the English speaking newspapers giving symbols to the local clubs and there being a huge number of ‘mafia’ or gang clubs.  There was also a huge number of prostitutes that I encountered.  By encountered I mean saw and by prostitutes I mean they asked me if I wanted to pay for sex.

Unfortunately for international relations I was dirt poor and scared to be alone on the streets of Moscow at night.  Because of that I made like Billy from a Family Circus comic strip; zipping back to the hostel through a byzantine series of streets with gangsters and prostitutes on every corner.

This Russian was different, he was here to fix my disposal.  He gave it a quick look and explained to me that the spoon was jammed under the blades; he could take the spoon out for $230 or put a new one in for $330.  “How difficult is it to install”? I asked my new comrade.

“It’s not too difficult if you have the tools”, he cryptically said.  After looking at the prices again and tripling the amount of time that he said it would take me to install it, I gave him the go ahead to install the new one.  “But I want to see what you do, so I can install the next one”, I taunted.

My taunts didn’t do anything to his Russian swagger because he had the entire job completed in 25 minutes.  That time included two trips to his van to get more parts.

During this time I was reading Big Dog, Little Dog to Baby Mojo.  We would go back in the kitchen occasionally, just to impress upon my son that one day I will do this and then he can watch me.

The Punch Line

Putting in a disposal is something that I could’ve done, but it would’ve taken me longer than I would’ve wanted; like around two hours.  It would’ve been a nice experiment putting it in, but I didn’t have the time to muck around now.  So in this case, hiring a professional was a good thing.**

As a stay at home dad I miss having the spare time to fix things.  Even though the child is my full time job, things still break or need a fix in the house.  Sometimes the repair will be something that I easily complete and other times it’s a repair that I simply should’ve paid to have it done.  Regardless, I’ll write it up here in hopes that you may be able to gauge what you can do and when you need to call in for help.  The series is called, DIY a Stay at Home Dad Can Do, but in some cases, you shouldn’t, because of difficulty, time involved or money.  All dads aren’t equal.   If you’re a plumbing wiz, then bypass this series and go straight to the fart jokes, which should be in the next column.

*Ladies, you can do this too.  I had to put the phrase ‘real men’ in The Punch Line to encourage time stressed stay at home dads that they have the time to do it.

**Your plumber may not have a Russian accent.