Water....Water Everywhere...and.....Meh

Pitiful times at the ranch. A couple of nights ago, we had a clogged sink so we put some stuff in it to clear it. The good news was that the next morning, the sink drain was clear. Three cheers! The bad news came in to play yesterday morning when we got up to find that water was coming out from under our living room, foyer and kitchen walls and the hardwood floors that we had put down recently had been water damaged overnight.

Whee! Apparently, whatever was blocking the bathroom sink moved on down the line but didn't leave the house. It just kinda set up residence somewhere else in the pipes and made any water that we were using go another route which happened to be the AC unit overflow pipe inside of our wall. We didn't realize it but all water was coming up that pipe and inside of our walls where it didn't become apparent until yesterday morning. You never want to wake up with your spouse saying, "Um...honey...I think you'd better come in here....I think that something horrible has happened." I should have known that he was too calm for it to be a cat emergency.

So now, we've got a couple of holes in our walls and a bunch of fans set up trying to get as much of the  moisture out as possible. And I won't even talk about our poor hardwood floors which are going to have to be replaced in spots. Those babies were so new and well....new.  And our hardwood guys were complete monsters that we swore we'd never let back into our house. You may or may not remember that one of them pooped his pants while laying our floors. Oh yes, church. He did indeed. And they were all chauvinistic boars. Chauvinistic boars who seemed to be the only hardwood installers in town who knew how to work with our concrete subfloors. The thought of them coming back into my house makes me just want to move away instead.

Now the house is completely upside down. The things that were in the closet are now in a huge pile in the Den. The kitchen is piled high with relocated stuff and we can't even use it because we can't get to any cabinets. We've got fans roaring and windows open and well, the house smells like a dank, hot cave. My lungs are screaming for mercy and I woke up this morning with Barry White's voice.

Yesterday while the plumber was trying to get our pipes working again, I found the Mister at the end of the hall, all alone. He was quietly painting more color splotches onto the wall. It was so poignant and sad. Chaos swirled all around us and he was still trying to find the perfect paint color for our foyer which now had floorboards like a wacky fun house. Poor guy. He'd gone to his safe place. I remember once when we had electricians crawling all over our house and the estimate for their work was going higher and higher by the minute. They had the power turned off and I found him at the end of that same hall, painting in the dark with a flashlight in his mouth. Quietly edging the hall with a sunshine yellow paint.

Home ownership is not for the faint of heart.

Until next time,
x's and o's,
Eartha