I was driving to pick up take-out Vietnamese food and talking on the cell phone with friend Jenny who informed me about the eclipse that was happening RIGHT THEN.
I was too tired to bother.
After that lovely start to the day, things went south fast. Our toilet exploded water and, er… stuff all over the bathroom, flooding it ridiculously. We’d already had two plumbers at the house this week to fix our sink, Friday (Santa Clausian man who huffed up and down our stairs repeatedly carting various tools and in the end couldn’t fix because his snake was too short — am not making this up), and Monday (different company, but could have been one of his elves; the mean one, it turns out, because he charged us a bloody fortune to replace a coupling outside the house but didn’t install some kind of valve access thing like he said he was going to — note: this is foreshadowing — and had his friend come and charge us a smaller fortune to put a camera down our line to check for more breakage and roots; there was none).
So Wednesday, toilet explodes. Everyone (home warranty company reps, plumbers) swears up and down that this is not a related event. We only have the one toilet, by the way. And guess who gets to wait in the house for the various plumbers to arrive?
I say various (you say tomato): At 10 a.m., two extremely slick and well groomed gentleman from the elf’s plumbing concern arrive, try to plunge toilet together, vigorously. No luck.
I go to mom’s group, return at 1pm to wait for next elf. Oddly, as I’m climbing stairs carrying Jonah and a horrific headache, a strange man in a striped shirt, walking down the street, keeps calling up to me with these aggressively friendly greetings (more foreshadowing). NICE DAY. Et al. Insistent upon getting a response from me. I manage to mutter, grunt, possibly fling a begrudging smile back down the hill at him.
1 p.m. two elves with snake. No can do-ey. The toilet needs to be REMOVED and line snaked with a BIG MACHINE.
Next plumber assigned by home warranty folks can’t come till tomorrow. Hello? NO. I call HWF again. I’m told that I’m now being assigned emergency status. Next plumbing co sounds nice. They’ll be here between 4 and 6.
At 3 I try to get out the door to go to store as we are out of beverages and snacks, and I need to pee. But the boy needs to nurse. At 3:45, I hoist the boy on my shoulder, descend stairs. Try knocking on neighbors’ doors but nobody’s home. Return to house to wait for next plumber at 4. Too tired to climb stairs, nurse boy at bottom in plain daylight. Whatever. It’s our house.
At 5:00 a friend calls and comes over. I hand her the boy and go pee in the back yard.
At 5:30 the plumbing co. calls. Their truck broke down. (Which reminds me, earlier, at 1 p.m., the housecleaner called to cancel because she’d been in a car accident.) They say they will call HWF for me and try to arrange another plumber who can still come tonight.
30 minutes later I call HWF. They say plumber told them I was fine with waiting till morning.
I am definitely not fine. I make that blazingly clear.
One hour later, another plumbing company arrives. Nice man. No metaphors needed. But he says the repair isn’t covered. I call HWF back to ask why they keep sending me plumbers who can’t or won’t do the work. I put plumber on the phone. Words ensue. Agreements are made. The man begins to work. Stops. The problem is roots in our sewage line. Our warranty doesn’t cover roots.
If the guy who’d been here on Monday had installed the outside access thing he was supposed to, this would have been a cheap, 30 minute, easy repair.
Instead, a second guy was called, both men were on the roof with some 300 pound Gorilla of a snaking machine. The roof access works better than removing the toilet. Fine. I don’t know. He says now our toilet now will work for at least 90 days. And if we want him to come back to inspect the lines with a camera, it’s free…
Meanwhile, as the repair is being performed, our neighbor the cop drops by. I’d called her cell phone to ask if we could use her toilet tonight if ours didn’t get fixed. She’s in full uniform, all her gear strapped to her waist, hair pulled back tightly.
We’re chatting. She tells me that today, around the corner from our houses, a guy called in about seeing a man walking on his street, possibly carrying a gun in his pocket. A man in a blue and white striped polo shirt. The exact description of the guy who kept trying to hail me and say hello.
Great.
Not that anyone knows for sure that he was carrying a gun. Could have been a toy, his wallet…?