Whenever I sit and replay in my mind the events of the past few days in our home, I hear along with it that chicken dance song. You know, the one that always gets used as the soundtrack for blooper reels, and such. Google it before you read this, if you aren't already hearing it in your head. I promise it will enhance the experience.
Last Sunday, I stayed home sick. I have been fighting some sort of demon virus for the past six weeks, sick a few days then better, then sick again, and I am getting pretty darn tired of it. But nonetheless, Sunday was a sick day. I was lying on the couch that evening, having spent pretty much the whole day immersing myself in a wave of one horrific disaster movie and TV show after another. And I was pretty happy. Snotty and sneezing and nauseous, and coughing up a lung, but happy. Because I derive a great sense of contentment from watching tornadoes, fires, floods, volcanoes, alien invasions, and other such apocalyptic happenings. Don't judge me.
Anyway.
That evening, The Police was puttering around the house (I don't know what he was doing - he sometimes prowls around, inspecting and making sweeping statements about the Things We Should Get Done Around Here, I just try to stay out of his way). But it was a good thing, because for some reason he opened the door to our water heater closet in the hallway and discovered....The Leak.
There are few things that can strike fear into the hearts of a pair of new homeowners quite like something leaking. A trickle of water, which is normally a docile or even pleasant thing, is now loathsome and scary, and your ability to stop it is the only thing standing between you and abject homelessness. So, after a few minutes of helplessly flapping our arms and wringing our hands and bemoaning the potential loss of our beautifully refinished hardwood floors, we got our acts together and sprang into action.
We called my dad.
He was out of town. As was my brother, The Police's grandparents, and almost everyone else we knew who could have helped us in a plumbing related crisis. And we needed help. The Police, while he is most certainly the kind of man you want on your team if there's crime to be solved or a bad guy to be chased, or zombies to fight or something - is not a plumber. And me, well - my nail polish was wet. Otherwise I would totally have fixed it myself.
We were at a loss, so we did what any smart and self reliant members of our generation would do - we turned to the internet. Amid a chorus of doubt and unbelief from The Police, I pulled up a video on YouTube related to our problem (who knew that plumbers made instructional YouTube videos?). Within minutes, we had the gas turned off, the water supply valve shut, and a hose hooked up and run out of the side door of the house to drain our poor busted water heater. We felt like real titans of the plumbing industry.
It is a very powerful feeling to face a situation which utterly terrifies you, realize you have to fix it, find the information you need, and get it done. Very powerful indeed. And through all of my snot and wheezing, I was smug. Because I had been the one to search YouTube. Knowledge had triumphed.
It is a slightly less powerful feeling when you realize that your newly found methods are not working.
Which they weren't. The thing wouldn't drain.
The next two hours or so were spent something like this: we stared at the tank distrustfully, wondering why it was double crossing us after all this time together, then one of us ran outside and down the driveway to the end of our hose at the street to see if any water was coming out, we yelled back and forth to each other because it was really too much trouble to walk back into the house to talk, we searched the internet again and found that it would help to open the hot water taps, I gave up and went and made a cup of tea - then drank it while sitting dejectedly in the hallway, watching the insidious drip that was threatening my hearth and home.
At one point I had a brain wave that the water wasn't draining because of air bubbles trapped in the hose, and took to violently shaking it, beating the hose against the floor, kind of like when you're a kid and doing double dutch jump rope. This resulted in some very satisfying bubbling noises from the tank, but no water coming out the other end. We were baffled. And the leak continued.
I will save you some time and cut the story short here. Suffice it to say that here we are a week later with a new water heater and no damage to our precious floors, thanks to the help of a generous plumber friend and a great local business. The old water heater is sitting in our driveway, experiencing what I hope is an appropriate amount of shame for letting us down like it did.
I'd just like to end with an observation about life as an adult. Say that you work really hard to save a few hundred dollars into an account for emergencies at your house. And say that it took you a YEAR just to get that few hundred dollars saved up. And then say that in one moment, that YEAR'S worth of savings is gone. Man, that would really eat your shorts, wouldn't it?
Completely helpless without Google,
Shannon.
sharris@blythevillecourier.com