Monday, December 20, 2010

Sinker

Sometimes, when you've just clawed your way up from the bottom, life throws a curve ball and you just gotta take it.  Or, in our case last night, life threw a sinker.  Literally.

After a few months of sheer all-out frenzy with work and home life (for both of us), we finally brought everything to a head this weekend.  Saturday, we ran ourselves nutty by finishing up the Christmas shopping.  We were here, there and everywhere.  Zozer was a real trooper, aided in part by the knowledge that her new little house elf, Henry, was watching (I'll have to post on the genius that is Elf on the Shelf later).  Yesterday we hunkered down and spent a day at home, our first in a long time.  I wrapped presents and M cleaned off his desk and tended to a few other things, and we played with Zoe and had what was a blessedly normal day.  It is impossible for me to stress just how much I was enjoying the day, as we hadn't done that in a long, long time. Too long.  I even had myself a nap - which felt completely luxurious.

We did go out at night, just to 6 o'clock mass ("Mommy...is that the mass where they have the rock song at the end?"  Yes, sweetpea, it is, which is why it's my favorite time to go to mass!).  I said to M, "I'm so excited about having a night off!  We can watch football, veg on the couch, go to bed early.  It'll actually be normal."

Around 9 p.m., I pulled out the iPad to do a bit of surfing.  The battery had only 4% remaining, and the cord doesn't reach to the outlet from the couch.  I said to M, "I'm gonna run downstairs and get an extension cord...be right back."

Halfway down the basement stairs I saw the tell-tale sign: a section of the carpet darker than the rest.  F*ck.  Water.  From where?  I squished over the carpet at the bottom of the stairs and tracked the line to the laundry room.  Where I saw a good quarter inch of water sitting at the door.  Holy Mother of God.  "Miiiiichaeeellllllll!"  He came running, hearing the panic in my voice.  Which is when I also heard the little pitter patter of Zoe-feet running, too.  Double shit.  She was up to use the potty and heard the whole thing and became intensely interested in just what, exactly, was transpiring downstairs.

The sink in the laundry room had clogged up from the gunk that ran through the sink in the kitchen right above.  It filled up with nasty water and bits of food, and then overflowed.  Onto the laundry room floor, across it, and into the finished part of the basement.  I cleaned up the mess, sobbing.  M worked on the clog, cursing.  "Our house is evil," I told him.  "It hates us.  It won't even let us have one stinking night to relax!"  He laughed and gave me a bear hug, "It's not evil.  We're okay. We're gonna be fine."  This was extremely reassuring to hear, as the only thing M hates more than painting is plumbing.  If he was keeping his shit together in the face of all this, well, then I could, too.

He's at home today, having dumped caustic fluid down the upstairs drain in an attempt to unclog the downstairs drain.  It's working...slowly.  Fed up with the ineffectiveness and deciding that he doesn't have time for this, he's called a plumber, who will be there between 10 and noon today.  I like the idea of a plumber.  His hourly rate is sure to be lower than M's, and the bonus is that M won't have to work on it.  This usually results in an understandably foul mood as he has to deal with the shoddy work performed on our house by the vendors chosen by the residents before us.  Just one of the many, many reasons we are so looking forward to building our own house.  M will be able to ensure that things are done right, from the beginning.  No more undoing someone else's mess.

Until then, we'll deal with the overflowing sinks and cracking walls and sticking doors.

On the bright side, we now have a nicely humidified basement.  I always like to look for the silver lining.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home