Tales from the Shark Tank

The plumbers came. They saw. And they have conquered the leak. Neo-Niagra is no longer cascading from my ceiling. Of course, now I have to repair the aftermath…assorted holes in walls and ceilings, not to mention the soggy drywall behind the upstairs vanity. I just fixed that after replacing the sink a week ago. So I knew I was in trouble when I touched it lightly and my finger went right through it. The plumber didn’t even need to use his saw to get access to the drip; the wet-wall just tore away.

I suppose we were due. We haven’t had any major repairs to the house in the nine years we’ve been here. But I must say, I didn’t expect this house to emulate the wonderful one hoss shay. Right now I’m holding my breath, wondering what’s next. Still, for tonight the silence is wonderful.

Today is a day for waiting. Wick and I have traded cars for the duration, as mine is the safer one, and I took his in to replace front tires. Yes, we’re planning to replace the whole car as soon as we can, but meanwhile I don’t want to run on bald tires on ice. I’m considering the investment in new tires to be inexpensive insurance. So I waited for that, and I waited for a call from another attorney (which turned out to be a very pleasant conversation), and now I’m waiting for the plumber. Yep, the ceiling is still dripping merrily, and I have had it. I don’t care how many holes get cut in my walls, ceiling, etc. I do not want Niagra Redux in my front hall any longer! The next step, of course, will be the claim on the homeowner’s insurance for the collateral damage caused by the broken pipe, wherever it may be.

My love is off to Merrillville, and life goes on. Joseph asked once this morning where Daddy was, but seems mostly to be fine with the new order of things so far. I suspect it will hit him tonight or Wednesday when Daddy isn’t home. Mommy isn’t supposed to sleep anywhere else for even one night. I have been solemnly informed of this on several occasions, as only a small boy can deliver such a proclamation. (When I had the temerity to go away over Labor Day weekend, he asked me why I was “gone for a whole year.”) Daddy is evidently permitted to be gone over one night. It remains to be seen what he will have to say about it as the week goes on.

And I have a classic, stereotypical problem – sleeping. It’s something I don’t do easily under any circumstances, but I didn’t think this would be one of them. After all, I’ve slept well enough alone when I stay with friends to take a break, or on the aforementioned Labor Day weekend run. What I didn’t factor in is that because I’m the one who travels generally if travelling is to be done, I’ve never had occasion to try to sleep alone in my own bed. There’s supposed to be a warm spot nearby, not a cold spot. So it was an interesting night. But you know, if that’s the worst of it, I think we’ll all be ok.

I don’t generally play with memes much, but this one tickled my fancy. So, having shamelessly stolen borrowed this from Li:

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY
1. Alisa
2. Mama
3. Mazik

THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD
1. Windrover92
2. Alisag
3. MissMouse

THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF
1. I’m a damned good problem-solver
2. Articulate
3. Intelligent

THREE THINGS YOU DON’T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF
1. My weight
2. The number of projects I begin and don’t finish
3. Disorganization

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE
1. Jewish
2. American
3. Hypereducated

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU
1. Physical violence
2. Fanatics of any stripe
3. People who try to legislate morality.

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS
1. A good conversation with one of my friends
2. tea
3. A little time to myself.

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW
1. Two rings: one a Celtic Tree-of-Life design, the other a Hebrew poesy wedding ring
2. Glasses, because I’m walk-into-walls blind without them.
3. A turquoise velour caftan I made in 1977.

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE BANDS OR MUSICAL ARTISTS
I can only pick three? Ok, then.
1. Wild Mercy
2. Talis Kimberly
3. Great Big Sea

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS
1. New World Symphony
2. Small Mended Corners
3. Ready for the Storm

THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS
1. Writing for a living
2. Take a pottery class
3. Teaching my son Hebrew

THREE THINGS YOU WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP
1. Understanding
2. Trust
3. Serious cuddles

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE (in no particular order)
1. Small children are natural nudists
2. True Justice exists
3. History written by the losers is more interesting than history as written by the winners.

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX (or same) THAT APPEAL TO YOU
1. Solidity
2. Eyes
3. Intellect

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES
1. Reading
2. Baking
3. Walking

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW
1. Convince my son to play on his laptop, not mine
2. Soak in a hot tub
3. Swim for about an hour

THREE CAREERS YOU’RE CONSIDERING
1. Grant Writer
2. Business Analyst
3. Baker

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION
1. North Wales
2. Ireland
3. Banff

THREE KID’S NAMES:
1. Rachel
2. Jennifer
3. Beryl

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE
1. Hang-glide
2. Finish one manuscript – any one.
3. See Earthrise from the moon.

THREE WAYS I AM STEREOTYPICALLY A BOY
1. If it’s broken, I’ll try to fix it.
2. Mess? What mess?
3. That car has legs!

THREE WAYS I AM STEREOTYPICALLY A CHICK
1. I can talk on the phone (or IM) for hours
2. When the going gets tough, the tough start baking
3. Help me try to understand. I really care how you feel.

THREE CELEB CRUSHES
1. Sean Connery
2. Harrison Ford
3. Toshiro Mifune

THREE PEOPLE WHO HAVE TO TAKE THIS QUIZ NOW
1. Cerridwen
2. Brigid
3. Athena

It has disturbed me greatly that throughout this conflict in Iraq, the military and federal government have been at great pains to avoid repeating what they consider one of the great tactical errors of the Vietnam war: that of allowing photographs of endless rows of flag-draped caskets on airfields from being shown on the evening news. That, they have decided, did more to inflame antiwar sentiment than any recitation of abstract numbers of casualties. If they’re right about that, then it’s a scathing indictment of the insensitivity and basic self-centeredness of John and Joan Q. Public. Recently when a photo of a few such caskets appeared, the great uproar wasn’t over the fact that those individuals had died; it was over the “appropriateness” of showing the cost of the war so graphically.

But now National Public Television has found a way, even without displaying caskets. I was listening to The News Hour this evening as I was making dinner when a sudden silence caught my ear. Looking up, I saw, in the silence, a series of photographs of men – some young, some less so – in uniform. Under each photograph was a name, including rank, the person’s age, their hometown and the place they died. They have made those deaths, of men from Hawaii, from North Carolina, from Alaska and Alabama, clear, real, immediate. They are not numbers like “37 casualties.” They are real people who died a long, long way from home. And they are not counters on a map. They were our countrymen. They were our neighbors. They were our friends.

I’m still trying to track down the source of the drip between my second floor and my first. I noticed that a while after my husband ran water in the sink to shave, I’d get a sudden brief increase in the speed of the drip. There’s no water under the sink at all, though, so it’s not the new sink or its pipes. The only thing I could think of was that the drip might be behind the wall, in the drain pipe. So I’m testing the hypothesis. I just ran the sink full of water and added food color to it for as many times in succession as I could until the bottle of food color was empty. Now I’m waiting to see if the water falling into the basin in the front hall in the next couple of hours turns green. Of course, it will probably turn what’s left of the ceiling in the area green as well, but it was already a total loss. And green’s a good color – if not for ceilings!

Update: I’ve put food color down the sink, the toilet and the shower, each in a different color. So far nothing is coming through but plain clear water. I really don’t want to tear up my walls to locate the damned leak, but looks like that’s next.

Every so often I get a suprise in my comment box, finding out someone I never dreamed would find me has done so. Most recently, it turns out to be my friend C’s brother. He lives in California, a bit out of the loop of friends discussing what’s been going on with the family. On the other hand, he knows that if anyone will have heard from his sister, it’s likely to be me. So in trying to find me, he found my blog. I had great fun telling C that her brother was following the saga of D’s cancer on the Shark Tank. Someone else who was here commented that such a thing was actually to be expected where I’m concerned. I don’t know about that, but I do know that somehow or other, this kind of thing happens to me with great and glorious regularity. The planet is the same size for me as for everyone else, but the World seems somehow to be a lot smaller. I like it that way.

The shower has been recaulked and the sink and all its pipes replaced in the master bath, but the drip through the front hall ceiling drips on. I’ve killed the mildew that had attacked the drywall behind the vanity where I couldn’t see it, but the drip drips on. I’ve put plumbing putty around everything in that bathroom that looks vaguely likely to have a seal, but the drip…drips…ON!

At this point, I’m just going to start replacing washers, seals, etc. until I run out of things to re-do. If it’s still dripping at that point, then I’ll call the plumber back and let him dismantle my walls until he locates the source of the water. It’s not under pressure, which indicates that it’s from some drain or other. Water enters the pipes at about 60 lbs psi, which means that if that’s what’s leaking, it wouldn’t drip, it would spray.

The good news is that someone figured out that the “anti-terrorist database” isn’t readily available, and approved my husband’s background check. As Li pointed out on the phone today, trial lawyer is not an occupation known for spawning terrorists. So he starts training on his new job tomorrow. It looks like he’ll be headed up to Merrillville sometime next week. And I didn’t know how many people were going to be willing to take my little guy now and then to give me a break. They’re coming out of the woodwork. Did I mention I have wonderful friends?

It looks like Dorothea must have installed something new and delightful in response to the recent spam-o-rama. The hack struck again, but what I received as notice in my e-mail was that a certain amount of spam had been “digested” and deemed yummy. And lo, there was no spam in my comment log when I checked, either, despite the resetting of my filters. Thanks, Dorothea!

This is one of those weeks when I wonder what attraction I ever saw in home ownership. Last weekend we said kaddish for the furnace. Shortly thereafter, a damp spot appeared in the downstairs hall ceiling. Ok, I figured it was condensation from pipes that had gotten cold and then warmed back up, and that I would fix it – respackle and repaint – after it dried out. It seems my calculations were in error. Friday it started to started to rain – inside the house. Just a drizzle, or rather a drip, but disconcerting in the front hall. So yesterday afternoon the furnace repairman came back out to make sure that the drain pipes from the new furnace were installed correctly, to be followed shortly thereafter by a plumber from the same company who apologetically cut holes in the ceiling (by now sufficiently sodden that it was a loss anyway) and the wall in the bathroom upstairs. (What idiot builds a house with no access to the plumbing fixtures for the tub and shower? Oh, well, now the hole is there I’m installing an access port.) He concluded that the caulking had failed by the shower, and created the drip. I’m dubious, but I’ll recaulk the shower anyway; it’s not that big a job. I asked the kid what happened if I recaulked and the drip didn’t dry up. He said they came back, with no additional service charge. And he charged me for the service call itself at a quite reasonable rate, and nothing additional for the 45 minutes he spent trying to track the problem. I certainly can’t complain about their business practices.

But I’m fully expecting to see them again. We’d no water on the floor in either bathroom. Morever, we’ve had visible splashouts and overflows before that didn’t make it through the ceiling. And it’s still dripping. I just hope I have a ceiling in the hall when they get through with my pipes.

I haven’t tried to hack WordPress yet, but I think it may be time. Every time I check, there’s another infestation. They’re like roaches; they proliferate faster than I can eliminate them. Now I’m finding new spam without the resetting of the internal spam filters. The words tagged to stop spam are intact; the number of links which should trigger the filter is unchanged (and set at 0), and the spam comments still appear. These creatures aren’t sheep molesters. They’re slime molds.