Oops -- hold your water, dear

Regardless of how you look at it, all it takes is one little glitch, a tiny bump, to throw your life into complete disarray.

Wendy and I were snuggled all comfortably in our bed on a Sunday night (yesterday, in fact), and she was reading “her Emily Dickinson, and I my Robert Frost”. Well, not really those tomes, but it was pre-lights-out reading time. It was all ever so nice. Then, Wendy said she could hear a hissing. It sounded like water running, she said. Normally I might suggest she was imagining it, or just hearing a night noise. But, this time I could hear it too.

We arose and went through the house checking all faucets and turn-ons and nothing seemed to be amiss. Then, on a hunch, I lifted the trap door to the crawlspace. And there it was. It wasn’t a hissing sound like a lady having a pee; it wasn’t a trickling sound like a babbling brook, it was a bloody torrential, Nile cataract sound. Uh-oh!

We went down and it was pouring out all over boxed papers, old computer bits, chairs, items of cabinetry currently redundant, and other stuff that had been stored away. It was a low-grade disaster to punctuate the end of our weekend.

I called an emergency plumbing service number. I was told I’d have to get the town to shut off the water before he could do anything. I called their after-hours number and a guy came out. And, in one of those rare happenstances, this fellow was a gem. He was wonderful, conscientious, caring and rapidly became a god in our books. I want to leave him something in my will, so impressed was I. How often does a body get that from a civic employee, especially when the time is nearing midnight in raw weather? He looked through everything, got thoroughly soaked, realized he had to go to the street and find the main shutoff. It took ages for him to get there, and he had to dig down close to the netherworld before he actually found the shutoff. But, he did. And we were able finally to hit the sack for real.

Fortunately, we did have the foresight to plan ahead before the water was shut down for the night. We filled a bunch of buckets and the laundry room washtub so that we could dump buckets into the potty tank and avoid that disagreeable inconvenience. We also set the coffee maker up to go in the morning, and filled a pitcher with drinking water. Very clever we were.

This morning a plumbing guy came and rectified the problem. The water was turned on. It was a return to paradise, we could shower, use the toilet, and so forth. It was all a reminder of how much we come to count on relatively simple things – simple things that would be regarded as a luxury in many parts of the world.

At the end of it, we were kind of grateful for a number of things. As said, we weren’t away from the house at the time, and we were served well by a couple of really thoughtful guys, one from the town and one from a plumbing company. We’ll now have to see if our insurance company is as obliging.

And my shower this morning was heavenly.