The water heater ordeal is finally over. On Sunday morning, we discovered we had no hot water. On Monday, the plumber thought it was the thermal coupler, and, because it’s OUR water heater and Murphy’s Law rules this house, the company had installed a left-handed one, which was a special order item. And, of course, even though I opted to pay the extra for overnight shipping, it was too late in the day to ship it that night. It had to wait until Tuesday. So finally, on Wednesday, the part arrived. The plumber installed it, and immediately realized that the internal cylinder had cracked and the whole darn water heater had to be replaced. Like I said, Murphy’s Law is in charge of this house. Luckily the plumber felt really badly about the whole thing and managed to shift some appointments and replace the water heater yesterday. I was very, very thankful. Of course, because you can’t fix one thing in our house without breaking another, a piece of calcium was dislodged in the process and screwed up our kitchen faucet. Handyman Justin was on the case, though, and fixed it. The plumber felt really bad about that, too, but I told him it wasn’t nearly as bad as the last time we’d had that happen (which is why that plumber wasn’t called for a repeat visit).
Oh, you’d like to hear that story of Murphy’s Law ruling our house? Gee, ok. Here goes: Bright and early one Saturday morning (seriously, like 5 AM), I woke up to someone pounding on my front door. I opened the door (looking back, I was terribly naive and probably shouldn’t have just opened the door like that) to find a woman pointing out the flood on our street. Coming from my curb. A water main had broken. The city had been alerted, but since this was the season of water main breaks for the city, it was that evening before they got out to even shut the water off. Of course, I didn’t know there’d be a delay when I called Justin, fresh off an evening of drinking in Kansas City, and told him his hungover butt had to come move his car from the curb. So, a couple days later, the main gets fixed, and later that month I get our water bill, which was outrageously high. Coincidentally (according to the city), we had a busted water line on our end. So we call a plumber who comes to fix it (and deliver the bad news: it was obviously broken by the city when they fixed their side). Unfortunately, the plumber left his new apprentice to finish everything up once the line had been replaced. The apprentice wasn’t venting the pipes, so that night when I turned on the kitchen faucet, a pipe burst under the kitchen. I run to turn off the water at the line, and, oh, the apprentice had installed the valve backward and it couldn’t be shut off. So we had water gushing onto our kitchen floor and basement ceiling. The plumber comes back out (after grumbling about charging us the off-hours rate because it was 10 PM), realized that no, the water really couldn’t be shut off, and just cuts off the lever. Then he pulls the ceiling down in our basement to fix the pipe. Then leaves. And that’s the last we ever heard of him. Well, other than when I got the bill from that visit and refused to pay it. They didn’t press the matter. I’m assuming because they knew they should really be responsible for replacing the valve and basement ceiling their apprentice destroyed.
So, after hearing that story, the new plumber just said “Yeah, this house might have a plumbing curse on it. I guess this isn’t as bad as that.” Yeah. Not as bad.
Still, an unexpected expense coupled with an entire winter of unexpected expenses and just plain terrible occurrences. This is the winter of our discontent. But it happens, right? I still have an adorable toddler making everything better.
Speaking of adorable toddler. Yesterday was his story time with the big kid’s group. He behaved marvelously! He was very confused by the different teacher and told his old teacher all about it when he saw her later. But he followed all the directions very well and impressed everyone with his sharing. I was so proud. Then, last night, he decided he didn’t want to sleep on my side of the bed. He wanted Daddy. He crawled over there and kept giving him kisses and then passing out with his face smooshed up against Justin’s. It was one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen. I almost got my camera, but I figured the flash would wake everyone up (and it was 2 AM). It was just terribly cute. Totally made up for earlier that evening when he insisted on feeding me my soup. It…ah…didn’t work out well. At all. For my shirt. Mitchell thought it worked out fabulously.
Ready for pictures?
Mitchell got a bath in the kitchen sink on Tuesday. He refused to get in there until I turned the faucet on at least a little bit. When I tried to turn it off because the water was getting cold, he displayed his newfound ability to turn the water on.
He loves looking for Daddy to come home. He recently figured out how to drag the chair over to the door so he can see out.
And, his favorite thing: reading. I swear, in the last couple days, we’ve read every single one of his books at least twice. And he has a VERY large book collection. He pretty much constantly wants to read.
The Magnificent Ms 