What to Do When Water is Pouring Out of Your Ceiling
In eleven easy steps.
You hear water. It’s 6:30 in the morning and you think to yourself, “Man, it is REALLY coming down out there.”
Step One: Head over to the dining room window and watch as the water cascades down the window pane. Nature is amazing.
Step Two: In horror, you realize that the water is cascading down on the same side of the window you are on. You step back and like an offensive hip hop song you see that the water is actually, FROM THE WINDOW TO THE WALL…everywhere. It’s like someone turned on a faucet — but in your ceiling.
Step Three: This is a critical step. Don’t skip it. Stand there and stare….maybe let your mouth hang open.
Step Four: Run upstairs, turning on all the lights on the way and yell for your husband to get up. This is an emergency.
“Once the two of you are downstairs and assessing the situation, surely a plan will form,” you convince yourself.
Step Five: Both of you stand side by side and stare at the waterfall. Together. Maybe hold hands. This is a moment. A moment where you realize how useless the two of you are as human beings.
Step Six: Husband gets a few buckets while you go outside and unsuccessfully stop the water by turning all of the power off to the house. You hear your husband scream at you from the dark interior of your leaking house. You consider running through the patio gate to freedom rather than facing him. You could make it. He is, after all, currently in complete darkness.
In your defense, there could have been a water shutoff “switch” instead of a “valve.” Honest mistake.
Step Seven: Come back inside and stare at your cell phone. Your husband continues to rotate buckets. Neither one of you is doing anything constructive to stop the water. Realize there is no one a phone call away that can help you. NO ONE! You are all alone. You and your husband could be stranded for the next few days, months or years taking turns in the bucket rotation. “What can I google to solve this crisis,” you wonder?
Step Eight: Go out into the street and wander up and down it in your hot pink owl pajamas and soaked house shoes. You are looking for someone, anyone, who will save you from this disaster. Do the 360-degree turn thing in the middle of the street a la Jennifer Love Hewitt in I Know What You Did Last Summer and yell at the universe as you realize that, again, there is no one. Do this with much less makeup and way less cleavage because, well…37-year-old helpless mother of two in hot pink owl pajamas.
Step Nine: Call the fire department and open your conversation with a three-minute apology about the fact that what you are about to request of them, is not a real emergency and how you KNOW that you should KNOW where the valve thingies are in your house.
Step Ten: Firemen arrive and shut the water off before the fire engine is even cut off. Offer them one of your children in gratitude. Over thank them. To the point where everyone is just uncomfortable. Feel a little better when they tell you they do this a lot.
Step Eleven: Learn where all the valve thingies are.
Originally published at http://www.rachelwriteshere.com.
