Can I stop for a minute here? In today's society of instant gratification and Short Message Service (SMS) language creeping into everyday language, why do we bother to still say or even type out the phrase, "in this economy" or '"in today's economic climate"? The phrase itself is becoming part of vernacular. Why can't with abbreviate it too to the simple ITE? I hereby declare that this acronym will be used forthwith.
Now… where was I? Oh yes, life getting in the way. It also has been said that things happen in threes, and more often than not, these things are on the bad side. I guess it's fate's way of punishing you. Now, I could say the cycle began with the air conditioner in my house going out at the end of the summer. Not a bad thing per se, but since it's paired with the heater unit, it's unpleasant when the first real cold weather hits. I could say the cycle began [or continued] with the breaking of my eyeglasses, causing me to shell out more money to replace them. Instead, I think I'm going to say that this cycle of 3 started yesterday morning when my wife finished her shower before going into work.
I was lying there. Half awake, half asleep and I could hear the sound of running water. Our townhouse is over 30 years old, so the sound running water isn't all that uncommon, except when it is coming from your own house. Liz informed me that despite turning all of the faucet knobs into the 'off' position, water still continued to come out of the spout. There was a simple temporary fix to the whole thing and that was to turn off the water at the main. Liz's dad, a plumber by trade, came out that evening to assess the situation. After a brief time of diagnosing the issue, he and I hopped in my truck and drove down the street to The Home Depot to pick up some replacement stems.
Side Note: Our shower tub assembly is only about 5 years old. Prior to us moving in, the first-time homebuyer program we used goes in and does some minor rehab before letting us move in. This generally involves installing hardwired smoke detectors and other safety issues. One of the issues was that there was a leak and some subsequent water damage coming from the tub upstairs. In short, they replaced the fiberglass tub/shower assembly and metal framed glass doors with a traditional fiberglass tub with tiled walls. They also replaced all the hardware which included a stubby run-of-the-mill shower arm and a dollar store shower head.
The shower head coming out of my wall was at approximately 72" high which made the showerhead itself resting about 70" give or take. Being a human of approximately 74"-75" tall, I found this to be a minor inconvenience. Minor in the sense that I don't spend a lot of my life in the shower so I could live with it. Then again, something occurred to me. If I were to have a plumber rooting around the hardware of my tub and so long as I was in the plumbing section of the store, why not look for something that I could buy to alleviate my woes. I found a longer, snakier apparatus that extended the shower head well above my head as to make it seem like falling rain.
So we went home, and after a few minutes, the hardware was all replaced and water was coming out like a champ … except from the dollar store showerhead. Crap. Was it clogged? Was there not enough pressure? Liz's dad assured me that neither was the case. That's 2. So, it being Sunday night and all and I really wanted to take a shower, we hopped in the truck and drove down the street to Wal-Mart to pick up the almost greatest showerhead they carry. I say, $22 for a chrome look showerhead with
So we after Liz's parents went home, I turned on the shower and was got my hair wet when Liz came running upstairs telling me to turn the water off because it was flooding the laundry room/pantry which is directly below our tub. The water continued through to the kitchen and then on into the dining room. That's number 3 ladies and gentlemen. In a mad panic, we mopped up as much water as we could, we soaked it up with as many towels as we could and we moved all the stuff that was on the floor out to the patio. Liz took pictures with her phone and called the insurance company. Liz's parent's came back and brought more towels. My parents came with more towels and their shop vac. It was chaos.
The following morning, after we dried up all we could, the insurance company called us, walking us through the steps. We had a plumber come out and replaced the stems (again!) because the ones from The Home Depot were crap. A water mitigation came out with their industrial centrifugal blowers and place a half dozen of them around the house. 3 in the laundry room, 1 in the bathroom, and 2 in the master bedroom closet because the adjacent wall and carpet were wet. Now we have to have these things blowing for 96 hours straight.
I suppose things could be worse, but it's still really inconvenient. I'll let you know how everything turns out. Thanks for reading.
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