Parents vs. The Sink

My parents are staying with me for a few days. The first night we were at my house, I mentioned that my bathroom sink has been draining really slowly, but I couldn't get the stopper out to investigate and sick myself out with whatever nasty build-up had developed on it. I'm usually okay with just sitting in the dark and going blind (oh, it's okay, I'll just lick myself clean and swallow the toothpaste after I brush. I don't need a sink), but my dad likes SOLUTIONS. He pulled out his pocket knife and went to work wrenching the stopper out of the sink. He triumphed over that sink with only the tiniest bit of broken property, and then, and this is where he gets the extra pillows in heaven, he scraped the gunk off the stopper with his knife. So. Disgusting.

That was not the end of the sink woes, though, because there was something in the drainpipe. Something that looked like it was wearing a bad toupe and was going to crawl out of the sink at night and drag us off to a seedy night club where people performed Barry Manilow songs in leisure suits. Or it might have been a tiny, dead muskrat. I was getting ready for bed and every time I used the sink to wash my face or brush my teeth, I couldn't help but glance down at the sink and be totally grossed out by the thing in the sink and feel like maybe I needed to lie down and sniff some smelling salts. Which is when my mom went rummaging through my cabinets to find vinegar and baking soda and boiling water and somehow dislodged and relocated the thing. I assume there was some kind of Mom Test she passed before I was born that gave her the necessary skills to do this, because I was planning to let the creature have the bathroom and to move myself and my belongings into the tool shed.