My family and I just moved!
The move was fraught with complications, from cleaning out mouse-infested memory boxes caused by the Great Mouse War of 2012, dolled up to the nines in our homemade Hazmat suits(I should have taken pictures, we looked like we were in the middle of a chemical spill), to a round robin of the stomach flu the likes of which our plumbing (and the houses) will never forget.
But we made it through the wilderness. Yes, we made it through.
Our new home is Gorgeous.
It's spacious!
It's evenly heated!
It's got bedrooms for everyone!
It's got new carpet!
And Cupboards; Oh the Cupboards! You wouldn't believe!!! So much built in storage and doors to storage and closets, and- well, you get the picture. And for us to be excited about such mundane luxury items as space and storage and heat and carpet tells you the little I'm willing to share about our old crap-hole.
So what do we do to make this New Manse feel like home?
We flood it. Twice.
Well, actually neither of the floods were caused by me, you are supposed to find all the little faults in a rental property in the first month of living there, right?
We've only been here 5 days you say?
Well, kids, pets and Husbands are bound to find the faults a little faster, right?
Let me paint a picture:
Our first night, supper is being made, shiny tired happy faces bouncing around the basement play-room.
My husband goes to pour himself a glass of tap water(that's right! from the tap!) in the kitchen. He notices a trickle from the bottom of the nozzle.
'Oh, the washer must be off kilter, I'm going to get that fixed right now'
He gets his screwdriver, unscrews the lever, takes the cap off.
The kitchen explodes.
There is a 3 foot jet of water screaming out of where the tap should have been, my husband is soaked, hands frantically trying to plug the geyser, screaming at me to shut the water off. I scoot under his legs like some backwards game of leapfrog, open the cabinet under the sink and try to find the shut off valves. Only they aren't there. Well, they are, but they've been welded open. So I run downstairs, vaguely aware that he's yelling at me that it shuts off UNDER THE FUCKING SINK and I'm in the area where all the pipes go, and I can't find a shut off valve, and I see a red tap, and I shut it down, and there's still water screaming out of the pipe. So I run back upstairs and yell at him that THERE'S NO WAY TO SHUT THE WATER OFF, WE'RE GOING DOWN!!!!! and he shouts at me to get over here and hold the water down, I'll do it myself, and then I'm holding a Fucking Cold gush of water, and I'm trying to use my hands to curve this fierce jet back into the sink while he looks under the sink, and then, he too runs downstairs, and then back up he comes and -CALL THE LANDLORD! CALL THE LANDLORD!
So we tag off on the water bending, and I attempt to dial the landlords number with freezing fingers on a TOUCHSCREEN PHONE because our landline isn't coming in for two more days, and I finally get the number right and call, and it rings once, twice, thrice, four times and finally he answers, and in my best professional voice I ask him how he's doing, and he asks the same,(while my husbands stares on through the water haze in his best incredulous look) and I say, well, I need you to tell me where the Water shut off valve is. And he says oh dear, what's wrong? And at this point I want to scream that I should be wearing my life vest right about now, but I just say that the kitchen tap has decided to stop working properly, and we need to shut the water down Now, here's my husband(since he was the one who started all this), and then I give the phone to him and grab the jet and push, and back downstairs he goes, and then the water slows to a trickle-hah-and then it is off, and my once clear kitchen is now quite sloshy, but I have just unpacked the towels and so I grab all of them, and thank-fucking-goodness we have a new HE Super Capacity washer and dryer right off the kitchen.
And then the doorbell rings. And in comes this old farmer and he asks us if we found the water shut off (I guess my husband kind of just hung up on our landlord), and he tells us that he got a call from the landlord (who happens to live on a farm 10 minutes away) and that since he was in town he could come over to check and see if we were okay. And then the Landlord himself shows up, and we all have a good laugh over us being all wet, and our silliness. One of the perks of small town living is that everyone knows everyone, and everyone is really helpful, but also they talk. And now we are not just the new people, but we are the new people who managed to flood our house the first night in. Right on.
Nothing got wrecked.
Nothing leaked.
Supper didn't even burn.
Husband went out at 8 at night and drove the 45 minutes into the city to get a new kitchen tap, since there wasn't much left of the old one, and the kids got to eat their first supper in the new house in our (now) Very Clean Kitchen.
We got the water turned back on around 10.
We started drinking about the time the kids went to bed.
There was a lot more swearing in that story than I let on, but I didn't want to frighten anyone.
Oh, and that red tap turned out to be for the water heater, husband managed to catch that before we broke other things.
Check back tomorrow for the Second Flood story.
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