Carpe Datum

Bleargh

What a rotten day. I got home from church with the little ones and discovered that one of our outdoor faucets was spewing out water like crazy. Almost certainly, it froze sometime during the past few days, despite the fact that I insulated the holy crap out of it, and so now there's a split pipe somewhere in the house. Fortunately, this faucet has a release valve thingamabob so that the water spews outside rather than into the house.

I have a suspicion that this pipe has been slowly leaking for a while due to water seeping out of the foundation very slowly beneath the faucet, but it finally burst. Anyway, I went to a local hardware store to get a tool to turn off our water, but all they had was a device that was so flimsy it would've broken had I pushed it rather than turning the knob on the water control near the street. Of course, the valve right next to ours belonging to our neighbor I could almost turn with my fingers, but ours was frickin' glued open.

So off to the bigger hardware store to get the industrial strength water turner-offer, and it worked. I have to say, though, that it took just about all of my strength and leverage to turn the thing, and it still bent somewhat. Now everytime we need to use water in the house until the plumber comes, I'm going to have to troop out there to turn the water on and off. We'll let the water spew out of the side of the house while we use water for showers or toilet flushes or what have you, then I turn it back off. What a headache.

At least the house is livable and there's no damage being done, unlike when our electricity went out over the summer. I got a rec on a plumber from the same very great guy who also gave us a rec on an electrician (the fourth one we tried and the first one that actually did the job right and quick and cheap), so I hope he calls us in the morning. I'm sure since this is the first warm day after a long cold snap that we're not the only one with such a problem, so I'm worried it may be the end of the week before it is done.

I hope that they can get to this problem through our kitchen rather than having to take a sledgehammer and smash the bricks of our outer wall. It looks like it should be possible, but I'm sure as hell no plumber, so what do I know?

What makes the day much worse is that I'm having to suffer through no Cowboys when they should by God be hosting the NFC Championship today. I can't believe I was so wrong about the Giants. I thought they would quit, but they've apparently matured and are now real fighters. After the last game of the regular season, I wonder if they might give the Pats a better Super Bowl than the Packers would. My hats are off to that team. NYC's stupid fans don't deserve them.

Oh, and baby Ben has been crying or whining more or less non-stop today. Bless her forever, my sweetie took the little ones back up to the church this evening for the contemporary worship service (with child care, hooray!) so I got a couple of hours of wonderful wonderful quiet time at home. I'm still depressed, but I'm nowhere near as cranky as I was a couple of hours ago.

Posted by Observer at January 20, 2008 07:45 PM