A Banana Relapse Will Require a Repair

This is Part 5 of my fiction story about Mindy, a compulsive shopper and hoarder of cleaning products.

To catch up with the story so far:

• Click here to read Part 1, Cleaning Products Don't Work Unless You Use them
• Click here to read Part 2, A Perfect Match.
• Click here to read Part 3, Fiction, Sangria, Roasted Red Pepper Spread and a Picnic
• Click here to read Part 4, Stitches and an Uncomfortable Surprise

Like the first four parts, I wrote this segment of Mindy's story using the words from the Words for Wednesday challenge, that are being published by River this month on her blog, Drifting Through Life.

When you are ready, here is Part 4 ...

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A Banana Relapse Will Require a Repair

Mindy groaned. “Why is it that everything about my life had to be so hard? How was I to know,” she
thought indignantly, “that you shouldn't put bananas down the garbage disposal?” 

Bananas had been drastically reduced in price at the grocery store last week, so she had not been able to resist buying up the entire inventory. Her plan had been to make Banana Jam, and sell it at the Farmer's Market. She made a big batch, but then ran out of jam jars and hadn't cooked up the rest of the bananas. The last twenty pounds of them had begun to spoil. 

Fruit flies had begun to invade Mindy's kitchen. Their little black bodies contrasted sharply with the cherry-red paint of her kitchen walls, as they billowing up like a thick cloud each time she disturbed a banana. Frustrated finally to the breaking point, she had begun stuffing bananas down the disposal to get rid of them.

Mindy poked at the mass of bananas and peels in the disposal with the handle of a wooden spoon and twirled it around. It squelched but nothing budged.  The gears were jammed and no amount of force or pleading was going to fix such a mess. The fruit flies had already found the sticky contents and were hovering over the sink. She was going to have to hire someone to fix it.

Her mind backtracked to eleven months earlier. “No way am I calling that repair guy I used the last time,” she thought. He had been so rude to her. In fact, he had even included the time it had taken him to remove the broken glass and boxes stored in her tub, when he tallied the labor costs of repairing the broken window!

Those boxes! They had certainly cost her some money, made her shed more than a few tears, and set off quite a chain reaction of events. 

Mindy's cheeks burned as she recalled the day Dr. Franklin (Paul) had come for lunch, and so bluntly assessed her need for psychiatric help.  She remembered being in denial, as he kept referring to her hoarding problem. She had insisted she was just a collector and an entrepreneur! At the time, Mindy had been furious at Paul's suggestion that she needed help, and humiliated by her assumption that they were on a blind date. She had been totally blindsided by the intervention her friend had arranged!

It hadn't been until she had rushed to the bathroom to wash her angry tears that she began to consider the truth of his words. Dashing through the hallway, a whole stack of boxes had tumbled down on her, pinning her to the floor. Paul had helped her up, and said kindly, “Let's talk.”

An hour later, Paul had convinced her to seek some help, and set up an appointment for her with a nearby colleague of his.  She had been going to therapy and attending a support group for hoarders three times a week. For the first time in years, most of the horizontal surfaces of her home were uncluttered. Buying the bananas had been a relapse - but otherwise she had limited her shopping to only purchasing items she needed and would actually use. 

Mindy had forgiven Barb for misleading her into thinking that Dr. Franklin was potential dating material! She had found him quite attractive, but she knew now that he was much too professional to have ever thought of her that way. As it was, it had worked out better for her that they had kept things on a professional level.

After calling the listings for every other plumber and handyman (besides the man who had repaired the window) and finding out they were all busy, Mindy wasn't sure what to do. The disposal would really started to stink, if she didn't get it fixed in a day or two! She wondered who else she might be able to call.

It was almost time to meet Barb, as they had planned to go on a short run together. She retied her sneaker, and headed for the door.

The front door was unlocked, and Mindy walked into Barb's home unannounced. After a quick look around she grinned; her own home was now perhaps less cluttered than Barb's!  

Forty minutes later, Mindy was panting and clutching at the stitch in her side. She laughed and said, “Barb, you just seem to know how to make me do things I don't want to do. First therapy ... then running and exercising ... and now I'm going to follow your advice and call that repair guy again.  I guess I can put up with having a rude, boorish man in my house for 30 minutes, if it means I can get rid of the gross banana slime down my drain!”

“Always glad to be of help,” Barb chuckled.  “You don't happen to have a friend who would fix my satellite dish for free, do you?  By the way, you really should try to be nice to the repair guy. I got to know him a bit when he worked on my house, and he actually was going through quite a rough time back then.”

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The characters and events in this story are totally fictitious. Like Mindy though, I am going to try to make some banana jam this week! If it turns out, I will provide the link to the recipe in my List of Fabulous Finds post on Friday. 

The Words for Wednesday words that I used in this story were:

satellite, bananas, unannounced, cherry, backtracked, included

and

sneaker, kitchen, force, around, squelched, short

Be sure to stop by River's blog, and see how other people used the words as well ... or better yet, take the challenge and write something using them yourself!

Have you ever put something you shouldn't have in a garbage disposal? 

Do you call it a garbage disposal, a garburator, a disposal, an in-sink-erator, or some other name?

This post may be linked to one of the great link-up parties I follow and list on my blog. Check them out!