roxy's revenge

it was a terrible tuesday.

it was so bad i haven't been able to even find energy to blog about it until thursday.

you see that photo? that was my tub filling up with water.

it's also my first mobile upload. insert smartphone pride here.

monday night, i decided the roxy needed a bath. she is not fond of them, but tolerates them well enough so she isn't a total pain. she's actually pretty accepting of this activity, or at least resigned to her occasional fate, which really just makes her all the more pitiful. and oh my gosh, those eyes. she will just look at me like i've betrayed her and shaken her faith in the natural order of things. but i'm tough and i get over it.

it was late in the evening, maybe 8:30, when we got done. the lawyer had promised to wash dishes. i was finishing up in the bathroom, and he was stacking pots and spoons, when i turned the water off in the tub. or tried.

see, our tub faucet had just been replaced. after that replacement, you couldn't actually stop turning the knob and have the water shut off. it would keep turning. so you kind of had to time the knob-turning to get it to the smallest leakage point, which was right before "full blast" again. i had gotten really good at it.

well.

i turned the knob. the water did not turn off. it didn't even switch to "leak." it just kept going.

so, water was pouring into my tub. the water level was rising. roxy's making a break for the living room rug to have a good shake. i kept turning. nothing.

i began to lose my cool.

i mean, it's bedtime, and the water won't turn off, and the water level is not going down. so i hollered for ben, a little shellshocked. he tinkered with it, but with no success. in fact, i was sure at that moment he had made it infinitely worse, but that's because i was becoming hysterical. next, i called our landlord. at 9 pm, because that's when landlords are able to take care of plumbing problems, you know. long story short, ben had to trek down our driveway in the dark to shut off the water main. then he had to come back and go back with a pair of pliers, because he needed those to actually turn the water off.

at this point, i was wailing. seriously. i was dramatic about it in every sense of the word, because this water business had ruined my evening plans of dish-washing and potty-flushing, and life would never be the same and we would never be ok again. so we went to bed without brushing our teeth, making the coffee, washing the dishes or flushing the toilet. and i'm telling you, after we shut the water off, all i wanted to do was pee and flush with abandon. funny how you don't think about stuff like that until you can't do it. to make matters worse, even after the lawyer turned off the water main, the tub was still dripping juuuuuuuust a bit. my tub actually mocked me. and i'm pretty sure i saw roxy smirking.

but we had a plan. we'd wake up super early, and ben would go turn the water back on so we could shower and make coffee and flush (i keep going back to that one...). we'd just let the tub run, i'd shower in ben's shower upstairs, and our world would be semi-righted until the plumber could arrive.

epic. fail.

i did not sleep well due to my anxiety and woke up several times in the night. so of course, i was awakened at 5 am with the requisite thunder, lightning and pouring rain. ben wasn't wild about getting dressed and trekking down the driveway to put pliers to a metal pipe while it was lightning and monsooning. life 8000, langs -2.

early morning. major storm. no water for coffee, showering, teeth-brushing, flushing. nothing. so i packed a bag and headed to the clinic, where i washed my face, brushed my teeth and washed off my armpits with a washcloth. i spent the entire day dirty and tired and really just pissed about it all.

thankfully, that afternoon the sun shone on us. the water lines got fixed up, we got a new faucet and now water only runs when i allow it. life is beautiful again.

oh, yeah, my washing machine quit draining too. i still have 4 inches of standing water in there.

home sweet home.