I spent several hours this morning cleaning out the sink drain in our upstairs bathroom. I just unclogged the bathtub drain last week, and I thought that was a disgusting job but the sink was much worse. There was gunk in there that was at least a decade old. I almost died from the smell.

I am kind of a snob about older houses. Our house was built in 1938, which doesn’t really count as old in our city, but the walls are plaster and the doors are not hollow and I love that. The oak floors have been around long enough to be covered in beige carpeting and then back to wood, and they have the scars to prove it.

But the plumbing. The plumbing. There are days (like today) when brand new plumbing sounds really, really nice.