Water. It gives us life. Cleans us, refreshes us. It feeds us longer than any food can. It baptizes us and washes away impurities. It warms us from our aches and and if you are devout enough, it can even cure diseases. But what if water became your enemy? How you ask? Well let's give you a purely hypothetical situation. We'll say about two years ago, you get up in the morning, get the kids ready for school, hustle hubby off to work and you leave the house say around 8:45. You do what you have to do (work, shop, what have you) and come back at 12:00. You open the door to the house and as you do this, you can hear your smoke alarm going off. What is this you ask yourself? When you open the door, you see your cat, soaking wet and the dog also dripping and doing that very nervous "circle" thing. You proceed through your kitchen and realize you are wading through about 2 to 3 inches of water. Your heart beats faster and your stomach lurches. You look above at the ceiling and see water flowing from the light fixture. It is coming through at such a torrent that the fruit bowl directly below the light is overflowing like a fountain, almost staged looking. You fly upstairs at the speed of light searching for that cloth that must have gotten stuck in a sink by a careless child. No cloth. Both bathrooms seem clear but wait, your bathroom is flooded, How? The faucet. It has broken at the hot water handle and is spewing water faster than the Trevi fountain. You quickly call for back up and 4 months and a $70,000 insurance claim later, you move back into your newly (again) renovated home and say "Thank God" we're back to normal and had our "major" flood/claim/disaster for a lifetime right?
Wrong.
Let's go back to last week. One morning you're lying in bed waiting for DN2 to come in and cozy up before the alarm goes off. As she cuddles up to you she says "the bottoms of my pajamas are a little wet and I don't know why?" and you figure because hubby was snow shoveling outside that she must have walked by the back door and gotten her cuffs wet. You are still kind of dozy and haven't really computed the facts in your semi-conscience brain. You get up and begin making the lunches. As you're reaching for the smoked turkey, you feel something dripping on your head. Your gaze slowly drifts upwards and chaos reigns in the Btchwstix household once again. In the main bathroom a slow leak has sprung from the pipe leading up to the faucet. It has been going on for quite a while as the carpet in there is soaked (we all wear slippers so I guess we didn't feel the wet). The ceiling in the kitchen is ruined. The bulkhead running through the kitchen to the livingroom is also damaged. Insurance was not called as our deductible is now $2000 and we figure why bother. So this has to be it right?
Wrong.
Yesterday morning, I go to flush the toilet in our ensuite bathroom (the site of the first catastrophe) and the water in the bowl is, how do I phrase this delicately...shit brown. Great, that means somewhere close by there is a water main break. Run the water for a few minutes to clear the pipes, hop in the shower and get on with other tasks. Leave the house about 20 minutes later and as I drive out of the driveway there is a river of water flowing by my house from the neighbour's lawn two doors away. The water gods have struck again. As of now, 10:30 am the break has NOT been capped. Apparently there is 33 water main breaks in Etobicoke alone and we do not seem to be a priority. You would think after almost 26 hours of wasted water we would be but there still isn't anyone out there.
In conclusion, I would like all my readers to pray to the water gods for me. Mine have gone unanswered, also, those that practice the "evil eye", if you would be so good as to do a "counteraction" spell that would also be appreciated, in the meantime please send water wings.
.JPG)
