How We $pent the Holiday Weekend

Valentines Day began like every other day has for the last month - me, sick in bed with "intestinal troubles" and Robert in the living room at the desk he has set up there since I have been sick. We watched a show or two together during the day, shared a little cake, no cards, no presents. Just a low key holiday befitting a sick person and these bad economic times.

But around six o'clock we both began to smell a slight burning odor. Robert checked the whole house and walked aound outside checking the roof. The only other option was the basement. Sure enough, He found that a hot water pipe tucked deep behind the hotwater heater and extremely inaccessible was leaking and had filled the small cement area that holds the furnace and the water heater. The bottom of the furnace had gotten wet, forcing water into the blower and burning out the motor. Robert shut off the furnace, shut off the hot water, duct taped the leak as best he could, and then spent the rest of Valentine's evening with our tiny shop-vac siphoning up the standing water and dumping it down the open drain in the basement. As he was doing this, however, he realized that the water foamed up and smelled of detergent...he had been doing laundry all afternoon...it wasn't just a leaky pipe...the sewer had backed up!

When he was finished we assessed our options: Saturday night and Sunday would add big emergency fees. Monday was a holiday, but maybe not for repairmen. Could we holdout for Monday? The no furnace wasn't too bad. You know we already keep the house between 55 and 62 degrees. But when it got to 47 we broke out the space heater. And over night we opened the kitchen cupboards under the sink that are most in danger of freezing and put the heater there. Having no hot water was no fun - we still had cold water, soap and hand sanitizer. But Robert's shampoo before church on Sunday was brisk! Which leaves the drains. We knew they were draining for the present and Robert went down frequently to double check - for those of you who are not familiar with our house, the basement is only reached from the outside, down through steep stairs, is only 5 feet high and has dirt walls, it is no picnic to run up and down to it. So we decided we could leave it till Monday.

Sunday was cold. My many trips to the cold bathroom made me colder. Washing my hands in cold water and then cold sanitizer made me colder. And worrying about whether I should be flushing the toilet probably led to more trips to the bathroom! I was glad when Robert got home from church so he could sit under the quilt with me and watch movies and get warm.

Monday morning, sharp at nine, our man, Steve, from Neerings arrived with help. Yep, they said, the furnace motor's got to go, $846. Yep, that pipe is bad, the whole thing is rotted, new pipe, new valve, horrible position - with labor $451. But the sewer's OK, the pipe did all the damage. Robert said no, the water was soapy, check the sewer. The furnace and pipe were finished in two hours. The sewer, which was completely blocked, took four more hours, two more trucks, more men, more equipment and $1200 more dollars. During all this time, all six hours of this time I am in my bed, needing to go to the bathroom often, plus counting down the hours to 4:00PM when I'm supposed to start the prep for my colonoscopy the next day. Things get to a really bad state about 1:00PM when the men announce they are going out for a sandwich while they wait for a bigger truck. Robert called after them, "Can we use the toilet?" "Yes, but don't flush!" That's when I started calling around for a place to go. But you are really limited on friendship when you are looking for a place to lay on someone's couch and make a mess in their bathroom. My parents were not home and my kids live too far away.

But we carried on, the men came back, and they finished up at 3:00PM. We paid the whopping bill, started to think of all the other things we could have done with that much money, and then decided not to.