This was our kitchen sink. It didn't work.

Well, I mean, it must not have worked - right? Ethel wouldn't let us keep it - we had to get a new one. Since I'm sure that Ethel would never want to waste anything as large and expensive as a kitchen sink, I am forced to conclude that this one didn't work, and that's why we had to get a new one.

I mean, it held water okay, and if you took out the drain plug then the water would drain out just fine. I'm not sure what other functions the sink has - but, whatever those other functions were, this sink was not performing them in the manner to which Kim wants to be accustomed. So - ipso facto, quod erat demonstratum, quid pro quo  and  habeas corpus, we had to get a new sink.

Now, if all that were involved were "buying a new sink", I would only object to the extent that a) it's a waste of money and b) there is nothing more intrusive on the environment than an old kitchen sink. Never mind those mountains of Pampers in the landfil that won't biodegrade - there is nothing biodegradable about a kitchen sink. Even kitchen sinks that don't work.

But there are more, and other, considerations - for one thing, it's darn hard to take out a kitchen sink. And it's darn hard to put on in, as well. In addition, you can't just get rid of the sink - because the old faucet won't match the new sink. (This reminds me of my mother's scheme - she got new drapes for the bedroom, and - since they didn't match the carpet - she had to recarpet the house).

So - of course - we had to get a new faucet, as well - which is more expense, and more work. (Ethel is quick to point out that her father bought the new sink and faucet; huh? so, just because we're not buying one ourselves, we should let a retired gentleman on a fixed income pauperize himself to give us a new sink that we don't need? Oh - that's right. I'm sorry - I forgot. The old one didn't work).

So last Saturday, Bud (my father-in-law), Ethel, and Silas worked all day long to put in the new sink and new faucet.

               

This is them, taking out the old (clearly non-functional) sink, while Ethel scrapes off the old caulking that was holding the old, broken-down good-for-nothing sink onto the countertop. Here you can clearly see an 81-year-old man, whose knees have more scars that all of the 300 Spartans who held off the Persian Army, bent over in half to set down a two-hundred pound cast iron sink - he has to set it down GENTLY to keep from breaking the floor tiles, and he has to set it DOWN because it has to come out of the kitchen because (as we've discussed before) it doesn't work.

We're talking about untold man-hours (and woman-hours and teenage-boy hours) of sweat, grunting and effort - but it's all for a good cause, because that old sink was taking up space in our kitchen in its arrogantly non-functional manner. You don't wanna know how long this took - suffice it to say that all of this silliness started in the morning, and later on Ethel had to stop Bud from working long enough to eat supper.

But finally, they got the new sink in, and (you'll all be glad to know this) it seems to work just fine. And the new faucet works, as well -
   
                              


In fact, not only does the new sink work (whereas the old one clearly did not) but - as you can tell from the photograph - it actually makes the kitchen brighter (difficult to imagine how it does this, since the old one was a bright, cheerful cream-colored porcelain, whereas the new one is flat-matte-black granite composite). And Ethel is happier now, as well - now that she has the new sink which works, she's lost all of that old anxiety, that unhappiness - that God-shaped hole has now been filled by a new sink. She now longer suffers from existential angst or nose warts or the "if-only"s - her whole self and being are filled with life, light and love, and it's all because of the new sink.

Meanwhile, Bud has yet to be able to stand up straight, and I keep walking around the house looking for the cream-colored porcelain sink to pour out what's left of my cold coffee - somehow, it just doesn't seem right to pour nasty old coffee into a nice, expensive, labor-intensive sink like this one.

Even if it does work.