What happens when you put shrimp in the garbage disposal?

I can tell you.  Let me set the stage.  Late Sunday afternoon we had a few friends over for some drinks and Stephen and I offered to cook dinner.  Earlier in the day we had gone to two different farmers markets so we were stocked with some good food.  We had a cocktail or two each and then started cooking.  I was trying a new recipe, more on that later, and I'd had a drink, so I was running around the kitchen a little more frantic than when it's just the two of us at the house.  Stephen was helping me with some shrimp for the meal.  He removed the shells and tails and cut each of them in half so they were more bite sized pieces.  Stephen is a great cook and I never watch over his shoulder to see what he's doing to correct him.  Yes, sometimes I look over his shoulder to ask why he's not following the recipe, but he hasn't made a bad decision... until Sunday.

I was mixing something by the stove, with my back to the sink and turned around just as I saw the shrimp tails and peels go into the sink with the garbage disposal.  I shrieked that they shouldn't go down, but it was too late, he had made up his mind.  Shrimp was fine, he said.  He throws everything down the garbage disposal, even the things I know shouldn't go down; egg shells, lemon peels, ice, etc.  Fast forward to turning on the garbage disposal with the shrimp tales inside.  Begin the bubbles.  In the middle of our dinner party, with a ton of stuff going on in the kitchen, the sink was blocked up.  For the rest of the night we used the other side of the sink, no clog there, but we were unable to really rinse off any dishes when the meal was done.

We tried a drain cleaner, we tried the plunger, and we even tried the Pinterest suggestion of baking soda with white vinegar.  Nothing worked.  The disposal would run, the water wouldn't go down.  After some research online I found that there weren't any magic suggestions and out next step was to take apart the pipes.

I was ready to call the plumber.  Stephen gave it a shot while I kept myself busy.  If I couldn't see what was going on under the sink, I wouldn't stress out.  As soon as he had the pipe off the clog was right there in front of us and it was easy to clean out.  I took the pipe outside and hosed it out before we put it back into the sink.  Problem solved!

Moral of the story: As soon as you put shrimp peels and/or tails into the garbage disposal it will form a nice little ball and clog the drain.  Nothing will clean that clog.  You must take apart your sink.  Don't be like us, avoid shrimp in the sink.

Goose hanging out on the bed - 5 1/2 months old!

This post is pretty boring, so here is an adorable picture of Goose.  He's getting so big.  There are days I get home from work and I think he's grown while I was at the office.  Six cups of food a day will do that.  (Yes, that's a lot of food.  We know.  We'll cut him back once he starts to look chubby.  Right now he's still super lean.)  Goose totally demolished a rope chew toy so we had to replace it with another non-distructable one.  Enter Kong Ball.  I'm pretty sure Goose thinks he is the best dog in the entire world because we gave him such a special treat.  He tried to sleep with it last night, too.  Cute little buddy.