February 4, 2007

• My husband, the hero

  I woke up this morning a little before the alarm went off but I laid in bed until it did actually sound off at 6:30. After lots of rest yesterday, including going to bed before 10 p.m., I was ready to tackle the day - tend to some laundry, shower and eat in time to make it to Sunday school and church today. I've missed church and Sunday school the past 3 weeks either because of weather or illness.

  This morning, we didn't have any clean washcloths in the bathroom cabinet when I went to take my shower, so I had to go down to the basement to get the towels out of the dryer. While I was down there, I started the whites that need bleaching. Once I had a hamper full of clean towels, I came upstairs, grabbed a clean washcloth and towel, and went to take my shower. I turned on the spigots and there is no water, just a hissing sound.

  "Oh, no," I thought. We've got frozen pipes. I turned on the hot water and I got a hissing sound there, too. I could have sworn the water came on in the washing machine when I was downstairs. I went back down to check, and it had a small stream of water coming into it. Then it dawned on me, the hot water heater would have had water in it and that's what would have started in the machine in the first place.

  So I wake up John, telling him we have no water and I don't know if it's a main break or what, but I didn't see any of  our pipes broken. He gets out of bed to help me out, because I desperately need a shower before I go to church since I didn't shower yesterday (I know, skanky).

  As he's checking things out in the bathroom, I tell him the toilet flushed earlier, to which he reminds me it will the first time because there was water in the tank. "Oh yeah," is my response as I take the lid off the tank and see that there is only about an inch of water in the bottom of it.

  I call the water department, who tells me we probably just have frozen pipes. He doesn't know of a main break and if they did have one, we'd still be getting some water (unless it's frozen, I'm thinking). "It is 12 below outside," he tells me. He dismisses me after taking my name, address and phone number.

  John continues to think the problem is them because we have air coming through our pipes, thus the hissing sound. So he goes scouting all over the basement. He comes back upstairs to get a space heater. Apparently our pipes are empty on our side of the meter (which is in the basement) but the water department's side sounds full (he's tapping the copper lines with a hammer to hear this).

  Less than 5 minutes (I honestly think it was about 2 minutes) after turning on the space heater, water begins gushing through my faucets in the bathroom, followed seconds later by gushing water in the kitchen. Yeay!!!! He's gotten them thawed out already.

  I get to listen to Hubby grumble the next ten minutes about how stupid it is that the line comes into the house from outside at a 90-degree angle, and goes from plastic to copper at that joint, and how stupid someone was to install the line in such a manner.

  But it's ok, because this guy is my hero. And with his tousled mousy brown hair, looks pretty sexy running around the house in his blue lounge pants and bathrobe, with his chest hairs peaking out over the top of the V. He has rescued this damsel in distress. And now that the water heater has had a chance to refill and warm up some more water, I can now shower and at least make it to church on time this morning. 

  • 9:24 am
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