Today, I learned how a garbage disposal works. Garbage disposal, by the way, is a device found under your sink used to grind your leftovers to tiny little pieces or you simply see one of these as a prop in horror movies used to butcher a moronic character;s hand when he tries to get a piece of jewelry or a key. It was months ago when our own garbage disposal just stopped working and no one even dared to put their hands inside to check out what's wrong. Call me a sissy, but I can not afford to lose an entire hand in my early twenties.

Because we do not have a functional insinkerator to dispose perishable food, the best we can think of is put leftovers inside the fridge and wait for the garbage men on Mondays. After doing this for several months, my mom finally realized that this must end before our fridge actually stores more frozen leftover than frozen food. so of we went to Home Depot to look around and buy a new one once we figured out how much one of these things cost. The price might be half of the problem, installing would be another. Finding someone to do it would be more costly than the machine itself. So i tried to ask around, we were at the right place because Home Depot always encourages their customers to 'do-it-themselves'. A guy was kind enough to help us find what we were looking for and tried to show us their displays. While he was explaining horsepowers, I was more impressed with the sound each garbage disposal makes as the blades turn. I realized the lesser the noise the more money. If I were to choose, I would rather have my hand chopped silently into pieces but my mother was already giving me that piercing look so I asked the guy if he could show me how to put a new one, which surprisingly is not that hard. He was patient enough to give me a little return demonstration or was it because not a lot of people were really coming in and he was not even that busy. I asked a lot of questions and one of which is how do you fix it when it's stuck? He showed me one of those wretch (sold separately) used to manually turn the blades from underneath. Then there it was, a 6.99 dollar solution that could fix the whole thing minus the effort of putting your hand inside. That works for me so that's what we got.

I gave it a try when we arrived home. I found out that something was stuck so the inevitable had to happen. I put my hand in there after saying a prayer and checking many times that the power was switched off. I took out a piece of black plastic thing that got stuck and tada! my hands are still in tack and the best part, our insinkerator is fully operational. I got irritated though that my hand now smells like grease so I will be spending the whole night washing my hands with every hand soap i could possible find.


Overall, I feel more accomplished than dirty.

=)