we bought our house in 2007 from a nice, evil, creepy old lady who generously left it half full of weird and musty furniture and 5 or 6 rugs deep depending on the room.
she was moving on because she had back problems. and was evil. and creepy. and i'm not kidding about the rugs.
very quickly we realized we had no water. like you could only use one tap at a time. and god save you if the washing machine was on and you were in the shower. i called the people i could think might know something about this to ask what was up, if my problems were normal in the town, who to call to fix it... blah blah blah. whatevs, cause nobody answered me or took me seriously and it went nowhere so i continued to have no water and went on with my life, with a few modifications.
like watering down my shampoo so i could get it all out of my hair
like using almost no detergent in my laundry because i couldn't afford the time it took to fill the washer (12 minutes just to fill. and another 12 to rinse, not that the rinse cycle worked. basically 48 minutes till it got stuck, and another 48 if i wanted it rinsed, which i did.)
then, this february it all came down.
when my family was gone for a funeral the town stopped by and lo and behold... i have a leak in my waterline. and a week to fix it or i will really have no water, cause the town gonna cut me off. so. i cry a little, and hyperventilate. i call my pop at the behest of my mom. i dont even know where it went from there. he tells me it will be ok, and a few days later random men in trucks stop by at odd times throughout the day measuring stuff, poking around for who knows what.
pop calls, and fills me in on the plan.
the morning before the towns deadline i fill my tub and a few bottles for drinking water, and it starts.
plan a.) was to use some backhoe or something to simply thread the new pipe onto the old pipe and pull it through to the basement through the same spot. this plan was abandoned by 9 am.
plan b.) was to dig a trench with the backhoe and again, thread the new pipe in through the same spot as the old one. this failed around 2.
plan c.) was to dig around the corner of my foundation and go in there. and it worked!
i had a crazy moat for a few hours. not everyone gets a moat. i didn't even want a moat and was still excited to get one.
the dude in charge, lets call him "dude" asked how i liked the water pressure, so i turn the tap on and....
sooooooooo much water!
i'm in the habit of turning the taps all of the way because it would surely take forever to fill a glass if i did not. its silly how much there is now.
dude asks if i've checked upstairs yet and i say i will in a minute and he goes back outside for something... then i hear it. it sounds like the carousel mall basement below the food court. its water running down the inside of my kitchen walls. and the instant i realize this, it starts raining in my kitchen.
in what is surely some sort of record i bound to the stairs and up with baby on hip and run to the slightly flooded bathroom. i put down the baby in front of his tub toys and shut off the toilet, whose tank is overflowing and water is shooting out the hole for the flusher. murky brown water pools on my kitchen floor when i get back downstairs. whatevs i had to mop anyways.
