Burst Pipe - Part I
/Thank God for Doritos.
Friday night, 3 AM. For some reason we are both awake. It's too early to get up, so we lay in bed and talk. I'd had some really weird dreams earlier in the night. Blair actually does get up around 3:30 (probably in an effort to escape my dream talk) but I tough it out and force myself to go back to sleep.
After I'm up, we head into GSO for some shopping. We return home around 3 and, exhausted, we both fall into bed for a two-hour nap.
We eventually find our way into the family room to watch TV. We ate a huge lunch in town and neither of us feel like making a big production for dinner, so I decide to eat cereal and Blair decides he wants Doritos. Only we don't keep Doritos in the house. We have to walk to the Dollar General up the street to buy them.
I offer to go as Blair is still rubbing sleep from his eyes. I make it down the driveway and step over the trickle of water running into the street when a thought occurs to me. "It hasn't rained. Why is there a trickle of water running down our driveway into the street?"
This is big for me. BIG. I never pay attention to stuff like this. And truth be told, I was way off base. Our Ford Explorer is parked in the drive and my thought was, "Uh-oh. I wonder if it's leaking something."
So I followed the trickle up the drive where it became more of a small stream and then into the front yard which, when I viewed it, could most accurately be described as having lake-like properties. I'm pretty sure I saw a duck go floating by.
I run into the house and announce, "The yard's flooded." Blair races outside. And here I must make an aside to say how happy I am to not be the man in this relationship. My part was done. I had found the water, I had announced the water...that's pretty much all I had to offer. No clue what might come next.
I am so proud of my husband. Being kind, let's say fixing things is not his speciality. (We were in Home Depot on Saturday and he was ooing and ahhing over power tools, sending me pleading glances. "I'll let you buy this one right here if you can tell me what it's used for," I said. He stood still for a moment before he stalked off into the paint aisle, mumbling that I was a cheater.) But he ripped a concrete lid up from our driveway, plunged his hands and a wrench into some muddy water with no visibility and got the water to our house turned off from the street. I didn't even known we had a concrete lid in our driveway and I certainly had no clue that had any relation to turning water off. I was most impressed.
"Well, that explains that noise," I said, once the water was off.
"What noise?" asked Blair.
"That noise I've been hearing all afternoon. I thought the AC was running and I kept checking to make sure it was off. Then I thought the upstairs toilet was running but that wasn't it either. I couldn't figure out where the running sound was coming from." Blair's eyes are huge. I give a weak smile. "So. Um. Now I know."
