17 Days To Christmas (I Think, Lost Count)

Have to take a little break from memory lane. Nothing says a special occasion like water pouring out your kitchen light fixtures.

The first time this happened was the day of my cousin's wedding. We actually had already moved to our new house and were in the process of selling the old one. I believe we had an Open House scheduled for the next day, which is a good thing, or Scott might not have gone over there until the next weekend.

Today's story starts a couple weekends back when I notice the bathroom floor has become a moat for discarded socks, one of Zoe's 10 toothbrushes, and the endless supply of dog hair.

A closer inspection found that if you didn't turn the shower faucet just so, it would drip water down to the rim of the tub, and unfortunately flow out instead of in. Four Home Depot trips later and problem solved.

This brings us to today:

5AM-ish or some other god-awful time well before the butt-crack of dawn - Alarm goes off for Scott to head to the gym for his swim and he hits the snooze.

Sidebar: The number of times the snooze is hit is proportionate to the amount of time I add to my own internal wake up call. For instance, if I tell myself I will get out of bed at 6AM (which is just foolishness, really), each time Scott hits the snooze, I add on at minimum 15 minutes. Considering he tends to hit the snooze at least twice, I typically get an extra half hour of sleep more than I intended. That is, if the devil's spawn doesn't force me up first.

5:45AM-ish - Scott gets out of bed.

6AM - Scott is on the phone leaving a message for his office that pipes have burst in our kitchen and he is not going in.
Sidebar 2: I thought it was kind of him to call his office before coming up to tell me the bad news. Unfortunately, I'm a light sleeper in the morning, so I was up and down the stairs before he finished his message.

Water is, in fact, dripping from the kitchen ceiling and light fixtures at not quite an alarming rate, but enough to be pretty certain the day is going to suck.

On the positive side, I had to move all those things off our counter anyway to clean behind them prior to Christmas. This actually forced me to do it. And to realize how much bigger the kitchen looks when I don't have crap laying all over the place.

7:10AM - Scott's first trip to Home Depot for a plumbing manual. I put Dad on speed dial. Considering there is electricity involved, I decide to work from home in case 911 (and a plumber) need to be called.

8AM - It is determined that our faucet leak was not fixed so much as diverted to a more secretive location.

8:30AM - Second trip to Home Depot for part and ceiling paint. As we are walking out from the self-checkout. Random female cashier yells. "Hey, dude, welcome back."

Cool.

Fortunately, the rest of the repairs are not blog worthy. Part was replaced, leak was stopped, ceiling and electrical was dried. And all without having to do any demolition or call my dad for advice. We must be getting better at this stuff.

And by we, I am by no means implying I do anything other than tell Scott what I would do if I were him.