Wednesday, March 16, 2005

The Great Flood (For Emily)

So, my friend Emily was not at work yesterday, and missed my rendition over AIM of this story. It's too classic not to share, so I figure I'll share w/ complete strangers as well!

Now, my other half.....he's brilliant when it comes to computers, but home improvement....well, that's debateable. I think....no, let me rephrase, I KNOW, that I am better at most of it then him. Just my MOTIVATION to crawl on the roof, or under the house, where all the nasty spiders hang out, is a little lacking.

But, I digress....Martin, being a boy, figures he is infallable when it comes to doing anything remotely "mannish". He IS a man, after all...therefore, his word is solid, & he KNOWS WHAT HE'S DOING!! So, the other day, a leak develops in my daughter's closet...(the water pipes from the shower intersect in there).

Well, Martin dutifully goes to Home Depot and picks up the necessary parts to "fix" the problem. He decides to fix it after he gets home from work, and it is dark outside. Now, we've never had a problem w/ the plumbing since we've been here, so we never had to seek out the water main. Therefore, we didn't have a clue where it was, and being dark outside, we couldn't find it.

Martin thinks that SOMEHOW it's a reasonable idea to just fix the problem w/ the water on. The water will only spray out a "little bit...It's fine, don't question my word, I'm infallable". I mean, what was I THINKING, questioning his "mannish abilities"? So, whatever, I forsee disaster, and leave the room.

2 seconds later, we have now acquired "Old Faithful #2" in my daughter's closet. The force of the water is coming out so strong, it's physically pushing him out of the closet, so the chances of him getting the bolt on is pretty much not happening. Meanwhile, he's screaming at ME to do something. (Of course, I'm the woman...I fix the messes his "mannish abilities" create) So, I'm running to the neighbors, asking if they know where the water mains are, since SUPPOSEDLY we all have the same setup. We can't find it, Martin is ripping the underskirting of our house off trying to look under the house to find water pipes.....chaos reigns supreme.

TWENTY FRIGGEN MINUTES later, our next door neighbor shows up, and shows us where the water main is. UNDER THE GROUND, under a green plastic cover, which is, OF COURSE, covered by the GREEN GRASS of our front lawn. Brilliant engineers that thought THAT one up. But, again, I digress..... My house is now a flood zone.I've decided we really need to take disaster preparedness courses. We really don't handle ourselves well in emergencies. I remember when we lived in Colorado, our gas furnace's pilot light went out. We didn't know how to re-light it, so we survived the night, with no heat, in NEGATIVE 20 degree weather. Yeah....we need classes....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, reminds me of the time Jon was going to fix the shower. He had to get down into the crawl space and shut off the whole house valve. (At least that part was good...,) but, duhn duhn DAAAAHHH!!!! he put LADDER down into the 4 foot crawl space.

The ladder HIT the shut-off valve and broke it OFF! So there's Jon screaming in the crawl space "what do I do what do I do." I go running out to the street, take the cover off the water main (I knew where it was...) and the dial is going around about one full revolution every four seconds. I can't turn it off.

I peel out to the neighbors to get a tool for the shut-off valve and a more muscular arm (neighbor Ryan) to turn it. Meanwhile, Jon is on the phone to the water company, asking someone to come out and turn it off for us! WTH???

Well, I guess it wasn't nearly as bad as your flood, at least he intended to shut the water off, and at least our 700 gallons were under the house instead of in it.