On plumbing

After a night-long battle with either food poisoning or some sort of stomach flu, we are spending a quiet day at home today. Really, I feel fine, but why push it?

Yesterday we went and bought the last stuff we needed for the bathroom project. One step closer to being done! I've already informed them that we're ready for inspection, so I need to get my butt in gear and get it finished, but I need to borrow my sister's drill in order to mount the hardware, and, well, I don't feel ok about inviting her over if I'm contagious. So I'll borrow a drill tomorrow on my lunch, and I'll finish it off after J's asleep tomorrow night.

The last time I decided to replace shower hardware it was in a friend's house. I was living there temporarily when Wil and I first started dating. She was a sweet lady in the process of a divorce, raising four boys on her own. I lived rent free in return for helping with dinners, laundry, homework, etc. Not long after I moved in, one of the kids became gravely ill with encephalitis, which required her to spend most of her time in Orlando at the children's hospital with him. I stayed with the other three.

The master bedroom shower had been on the fritz since before I moved in. It would turn only the cold water on, and even in Florida a cold shower in January is not a fun experience. So I went out and bought and installed the proper replacement parts and they seemed to work just fine when I tested the shower. No leaking around the knob, warm water. I was a regular handy-woman!

So about 2 am, after getting the last of the dishes put away, and the last laundry folded, off to the shower I went, so enthused at the fact that, for the first time since November I was going to be taking a shower in a strictly girlie environment. No tub toys, no little boy underwear flung in the corner. Just me, and a nice warm shower! All mine.

I turned the water on, waited for a nice steam to build, and into heaven I stepped, but just as soon as I had the shampoo in my hair, all rich and lathered, I heard a "chink!" and the whole assembly came shooting off the wall, followed by a geyser of water which quickly turned ice cold. Awww, hell.

The water pressure was too strong to wrangle the handle back on, and without the handle I couldn't shut the water off. So here I am, wet, naked, soapy, trying to hold an icy flood back with my hand. After hearing my shouting, Wil came running in, managed to pin the shower curtain to the four corners with his hands and feet to hold the water in the shower, while I threw on some clothes and tore across the house looking for the emergency shut off valve and trying not to wake the kids.

Finally, I realized that even if I couldn't find the shutoff for the bathroom, certainly there was a shut off at the street. How else does the water company come and shut you off when you don't pay your bill? So I ran to the road, in nothing but a t-shirt, in 20 degree weather, soaking wet, opened the little cover and plunged my arm elbow deep into the darkness, reaching for the handle. Instead I came up with a fire ant mound and several years worth of spider webs. But, dammit! I got the water turned off. So now, covered in ant bites and my arm throbbing, I went back inside to a house with no water, to find Wil standing there, soaked and shivering himself, in a bathroom ankle-deep with freezing water.

I swore at that moment to never try handy-man work again. However, we did get everything reassembled, and to my knowledge, it never gave them any trouble again.

Now do you see why I've dragged my butt on finishing this bathroom? At the very least, I'm waiting on some warmer weather. :)