TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!!!!!

(Some of the pictures can only be appreciated if clicked on and viewed full size.)

It all started so innocently.

Dug found that some of the pipes in the bathroom weren't being used anymore. We cut, tugged, cranked and pulled to remove those suckers. Once the pipes were removed, we capped them. Well, I should say we capped one and found that the other one wasn't threaded. Until we could figure out what to do, we stuffed a paper towel in its mouth and wrapped it in plastic to protect us from any fumes that might try to escape from the sewer lines.

Fast forward one day. My youngest son is in the newly sub-floored bathroom saying, "Water! Water!" Dug, working in his basement lair, hears him and also notices the sound of falling water. Upon investigation, he finds that the kitchen sink, which has some drainage issues, causes water to backflow up the same removed pipe. Problem: Pipe removed = no where to go but out.

Of course this is also a day where Dug can not stop to work on house issues. Major things with his job need to be done. So we are all on strict orders: Don't use the upstairs sink or dishwasher.

Fast forward to my brother, Chris, coming home from work. Dug asks him to snake the pipe and hopefully clear up any obstructions. After a few tries, it's obvious that the snake ain't the pipe hero we had hoped him to be. Dug and Chris determine that the best solution is to reroute the entire drainage pipe in a more direct route.

This whole house renovation thing has been quite a historical lesson. While we don't know who, specifically, was responsible for all the of "improvements," it is obvious by looking at the different piping "solutions" that we are not dealing with the craftmanship of a plumbing professional. Heck, I'm not even sure the guy had any plumbing experience at all. But just wait. I haven't even scratched the surface yet.

So, back to the story. A more direct route is discussed and as Dug is off to Home Depot to get the proper supplies, Chris is in charge of removing a pipe that comes from nothing and leads nowhere, but is blocking the way. It's around 5 o'clock and the sun just set. (That comes into play in a moment.) I'm at the computer. (I know, big shock!)

As I'm perusing various blogs, I hear the Sawzall. Thinking it's my brother, I pay it no mind. Then I hear my oldest son chastising my youngest and my brother yelling, "Turn it off!" My heart leaps into my throat and I race into our unfinished bathroom, sure that I'll find the giant power tool, blood and little fingers on the floor. As I push open the door I find the two brothers, but nothing else. (I still don't know what their scuffle was about.) Chris is still yelling "Turn it off! Turn it off!" from the basement and I'm confused. I hear water flowing, but am not understanding. I start down the basement stairs, all the while my brother's cries are growing more and more frantic. And that water sound is starting to get louder.

"Turn it off!!!" Chris continues to shout.

"Turn what off?" I yell back.

"The dishwasher, the washing machine, whatever it is that is draining!" he screams.

I run back up the stairs and check the dishwasher. Nope, the green "Clean" light is on from when I ran it this morning. Through the kitchen door I check the washing machine, but it's empty. I still haven't seen what has happened, but know it has something to do with a lot of water pouring into places it shouldn't be.

I yell down the stairs, "Do I need to turn off the water to the house?"

Barely a half-second passes before he bellows, "Yes!!!"

I run out the door. It is getting dark because the sun is down, but still light enough to see. (Told you sunset would come into play.) Out by our sidewalk are the water meters for our house and our neighbor's. I've done this before but can't remember which meter is ours. I try to see what meter is ticking off faster, but the stinking sun is gone and the little holes where they live are black as night. So now I have to run back into the house and grab the Maglite, which by a MIRACLE OF GOD is actually in its drawer. Back out to the curb, I stick my hands in the muddy goo, wipe off the dial of water meter #1. Nada. Dang it! Plunge my hand into the mire of water meter #2 and the numbers are spinning as fast as you can read this: tick tick tick tick. Since it's been raining nonstop for months, the valve is in about five inches of seriously cold, murky water and its specific location is unknown to me. So, just like the girl in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, I have to feel around for the valve with who-knows-what living in that dark, wet hole. I find it, chant my faucet mantra of "Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey," and turn off the the water. I take a deep breath.

Cold, barefoot and muddy I return to the house and venture down to survey the damage. My brother is on his knees, a 2-liter bottle with the neck cut off in his hands, bailing the water from the flooded bathroom into the storm drain outside the basement door. The entire bathroom has at least an inch of standing water and looks as though someone took a fire hose to it. Water is everywhere. Dripping from the ceiling fan, light fixture, and any other hole in the ceiling. Everything is drenched. The floor, walls, toilet, shelves...everything! Dug's office is on the other side of the bathroom wall and water is leaking under the wall and starting to spread across the room. Chris yells at my oldest to get towels and we try to stop the flow while continuing to bail. I didn't know you could bail outside of a boat. But you can.

What happened? We didn't know. Chris was starting to cut the superfluous pipe and vibrating things up a bit when suddenly he heard water flowing. At first he thought it was the washing machine or dishwasher draining because it was so much. But then when it came gushing out of the ceiling, he didn't know what was going on. After yelling at me, he tried to figure out which pipe was to blame. On the far side of the bathroom, water was flowing from the ceiling fan, the light fixture, and heavily from the hole where a pipe vents in the middle of the room. But most of the water was flooding onto the floor right next to the door. When Chris looked down and saw that it was overflowing into the computer room, he switched from search and rescue to emergency bailer. And that's where I found him.

If you remember, Dug was at Home Depot. I called him, in a bit of a panic, and ordered him home.

"Dug, you need to come home now!"

"Why?" he asked.

I then proceeded to explain the whole situation. He, a little too calmly, stated, "You find out what happened and I'll buy the stuff to fix it."


What?! Did he just say that he wasn't going to come and immediately take care of this completely out of control situation?! "But we don't know what's wrong, it's in the ceiling."

"Get Chris to stick his head up there and see what's wrong."

He was still not as concerned as I thought he should be. Although in hind sight, I'm glad, but at that moment I felt a little like a one-year old when their parents try to get them to walk by standing them up and letting go. So I did the only thing I could. I hung up on him.

Chris and I conferred and realized that the only the thing to do was to turn the water back on and watch. The plan was simple. I go outside, turn the water on for five seconds, turn it off and Chris locates the leak. The first three parts went like clockwork. When I come back in, the water is still draining out of the ceiling and Chris calmly states that five seconds is too long and he is looking in the wrong spot. Apparently the water first starts leaking at the far side of the bathroom and because whoever built our house has no idea what a right angle is or what the term level means, the deluge at the near end is just run off from the far end.

Now our only choice is to tear the ceiling apart. Since Chris is my brother, we think along the same lines. He punches a hole in the ceiling and we happily tear it apart. (Dug isn't there to rein in our messy natures.) We still can't see anything though. By this time, Dug has called back to check on our progress and tells us that there is a main shutoff in the house. That would have been nice to know about an hour ago. But I am not a woman who bears grudges. I turn off the inside valve and turn the outside one back on. (Risking the cold water, yucky mud and nameless creatures once again.) Now I can actually talk to Chris while working the valve, since we have to turn the water back on once more, to find the leak.

My brother sticks his head and a flashlight in the ceiling and I open the valve. Once again, I hear the familiar, "Turn it off!" I do and run back just in time to see him spitting and wiping his face. (My big sister self snickers.) The best news is heard, "I found the leak!"

Apparently, the previous "plumber" did not glue one of the joints.* It was just stuck together. Maybe he thought his own strength was enough. Or maybe he didn't think at all. (I personally think it was the latter.) Whatever the case, the vibration of the Sawzall and the pressure of the water popped that sucker off, allowing water to shoot to the far wall of the bathroom, flow back along the ceiling, dripping through any crack and pouring from the large hole that accomadates the four inch vent stack (big huge pipe for us laymen) next to the bathroom door.

The good news? All we needed to do to fix it was glue the pipe into the connector. As I am typing this, we have running water into the house again. Yay! Now if we can just get that kitchen-drain thing fixed, we can focus back on renovating our main bathroom again.

*We know that the work was done at least a decade ago. How it held together so long is beyond me.

The Pee Chronicles

Having four children five years apart has more than its fair share of drama. Mine seems to be centered around pee lately.

My firstborn, Dodge, was a classic toilet-training example. Very average. Nothing too sinister, nothing exceptional. His nearest-to-criminal act was determining that peeing into the dirty clothes basket was preferable to peeing his pants. Considering that his room and the bathroom are on different floors, I can’t argue with his logic. My problem is that he didn’t tell me. I only figured it out when I emptied the hamper into the washing machine and was almost asphyxiated by the ammonia fumes. (It had been a few days since the incident. Time for the smell to just fester and build.) To his credit, he confessed during my not-as-calm-as-I-should-be interrogation.

Second child, Scoochy, was the dream toilet trainee. We used the book, Toilet Training in Less Than a Day with great success. From that one day, she has been perfectly trained and has probably had accidents less times than I can count on one foot, including night time. Unfortunately, you don’t truly understand peace until it’s ripped violently away from you. This brings me to my third child.

Princess Cutie-Pops, is my second daughter. She has beautiful red hair and the fair Irish complexion to match. Adorable freckles dot her nose and the tops of her cheeks. Long, red eyelashes frame her dark, brown beautiful eyes. She’s definitely my most affectionate for when she smiles at me and says, “I love you, Mom!” (which she does often), it completely melts me. As she bobs away to go play again, it’s as if she has warmed the air with her presence. My eyes start to water and I suddenly realize that the temperature has raised because the furnace has kicked on. And my eyes are watering because the ammonia vapor rising from the heating vent is burning them. Cutie-pops has struck again. When questioned, she will eventually come clean, and the reason is always the same. “Mommy, I had to go to the bafroom lily, lily bad!”

She has peed, I’m sure, in her pants more than the toilet. And this is two years out of diapers! She locked herself into our minivan and peed at the door, she has peed right in front of the toilet innumerable times. Other crime scenes: her bed, my bed, her brother’s bed, in front of her dresser, in her dirty clothes bin (took a cue from big brother on that one!), in every room of the house: including hallways, stairwells and all rooms of our three-bedroom basement apartment. I thought she was a hard one to deal with when it came to Destination: Toilet, until her younger brother “came of age.”

Tank is our fourth child, second son. He is the toughest little guy I’ve ever met. It takes a pretty hard fall or drastic injury to make him cry, i.e. stepping on a nail or cuts that need stitches. With that much grit and gumption, it’s no wonder that he has been a bit difficult to potty-train. He’s been out of diapers for about five months or so, but he has already surpassed all three of my other children in terms of creativity during urination. He has sat next to me on the arm of the computer chair and peed, all the while missing the chair completely and saturating the floor below. He has been sitting at the dining room table and, without looking, peed under the table onto his brother sitting across from him. One time he was sitting on the toilet, my eldest squatting in front of him, keeping him company. Tank relieved himself but unfortunately wasn’t “aimed” correctly. At least he wasn’t aimed at the toilet correctly. He was perfectly lined up so that his brother was rudely interrupted mid-sentence! Yech!

One morning, way too early, I awoke to “Tank peed, Mommy!” Not my favorite alarm-system, I can assure you. I grabbed a towel to drop on the crime scene so I could return to bed for a little while before truly dealing with the situation. I couldn’t find a wet spot. I searched everywhere. Nope. Nothing. Nada. Maybe he actually used the potty chair, but because he took off his clothes and was running around naked, his siblings assumed he had peed his pants. In my "the-car’s-moving-but-there’s-no-driver" mental state, I naively believed this must be the case. I found my way back to bed.

Fast forward several hours. The night before I had done the dinner dishes but lazily hadn’t washed the cookie sheet. (Read: It doesn’t fit in the dishwasher.) I had just cleaned up lunch dishes and the kitchen was all clean but for that one item, which I had overlooked at breakfast as well. Okay, I thought, I’ll do it now. I picked it up and turned without really looking at it and the centrifugal force of me whipping around caused a bunch of liquid (that wasn’t there the night before) to come sploshing out, all over the counter, floor and fruit basket. Surprised, I saw that there was a good amount of “apple juice” still in the sheet. A thought dawned on me. I froze. My mind leapt through the possibilities. No, it couldn’t be. I leaned over wishing, hoping, praying that the soft smell of apples would waft up to my nose. Please, please, please…no! My olfactory senses were greeted with that pungent tang of six-hour-old pee. My son had very carefully peed right into the cookie sheet. Not a drop was missed. The only mess was from me and dang, it was a doozie.

Maybe somehow all these little trials are preparation for something bigger or are little parables for “greater” truths that will make me a better person. That's what I'm hoping for. All I know for sure, though, is that it could always be worse and I had better be thankful for what I’ve got. Even if it is a 30-pound urine machine with the creativity of da Vinci.

Bikes, Bruises, and Egos

This actually happened a few months ago, but as I was reading through my journal I thought it would make a perfect post. So without further ado...

I was riding my bike yesterday. I’ve wanted to do more than just “get into shape.” I want exercise to be something that just happens with me. I don’t want to schedule it; I want my life to be full of it. I want to ride my bike instead of drive. I want to only take the stairs. When I’m tired I want to do a rejuvenating yoga pose instead of nap. I want to go on hiking adventures and biking tours and walk the Irish burren. But I digress…

So, I was riding my bike yesterday. I was alone, everyone was still in bed (Don’t get the wrong idea though. It was 8 am, not exactly the break of dawn.) and a very unfortunate thing happened: I crashed. My kids crash all the time, skinning a knee or scuffing up their hands a bit. No big deal. But I fell and had ten separate points of injury! Ten! One, zero! And to make matters worse, I was practically at a stand still. How can you fall and hurt ten places on your body at zero mph?! Leave it to me. I have a special knack of finding the most complete ways for things to go wrong. Back to the story:

I was checking out a bike path that I had never been on. I haven’t ridden my bike in a while (read: out of shape) so I decided I wouldn’t go all the way to the end which was still a few more miles. The path follows a river and is really quite beautiful. I had spotted a water treatment facility ahead and decided that I would turn when I reached it. As I approached my turning point, I slowed way down and prepared to make the u-turn to the left.

Problem #1: I had chosen a spot that was bordered on one side by a chain-link fence and the other by a cement out-building. Why I didn’t pedal past that point and execute my about-face with grass shoulders I’ll never know, and forever rue. Anyway, I had come almost to a stand still and began the turn. Now as anyone knows, the slower you go on a bike, the less stable it is. That coupled with the tight space that I had chosen was a disastrous combination. As my stability neared zero, I attempted to put my left foot down as a stabilizer.

Problem #2: My new bike has toe straps on the pedals. A feature I had been a little uncomfortable about already, but hadn’t taken the time to remove yet. As I automatically moved my foot down, I immediately recognized the foreign toe straps prohibiting this action. I only had a one-second window to react. Now, if I was in the Unit or partners with Jack Bauer I would have two choices. Calmly raise my left foot a smidge, pull it back out of the straps thereby allowing free movement of said foot OR quickly and adeptly take my knife from my pocket (because, of course, I would be carrying one), and with one swift motion open the knife while swinging my arm down to cut the straps from my pedal, closing the knife and returning it to my pocket, while simultaneously releasing my foot from its imprisonment and allowing it to stabilize me and my bike while we negotiate the perilous turn.

Unfortunately I am not a highly trained Special Forces member, nor am I the sole salvation of the United States of America on six separate 24-hour occasions. I had available to me only one option: keep struggling. Even though I knew that the only way to succeed was if my leg muscles were strong enough to break the straps (which they aren’t), I strained for that eternal second, ultimately pulling the bike, and myself with it, ever faster toward asphalt doom. As we fell (the bike and I) the only injury I specifically remember experiencing was when my left shoulder hit the ground, it threw my head to the left and the asphalt jumped up and bashed my left temple. (I had been lazy and hadn’t run back in the house to get my helmet before I left. Tsk! Tsk!)

I stayed on the ground for a moment or two then pulled myself up. Of course the most important thing to do now was assess the damages. Did anyone see me? I looked up and down the trail. Whew! No one. My body was bruised, but my ego was intact. Now, check the body. My hands began to scream. I looked but there were only four tiny little scrapes. How can the tiniest little hurts cause such searing pain? My elbow was scraped up pretty bad and beginning to bleed in two areas bigger than Band-Aids could cover. My left hip felt bruised and my right knee had two perfect circles imprinted on the inside. I’m thinking that they hit that toothy-thing the chain goes around. It has circles cut out of it that match my injuries perfectly. I didn’t know it yet, but my left ankle got scraped up too. (I found that one in the shower, yeeeowww!)

Of course I was at my farthest point from home, but how else was I going to get back? So I got back on the horse and began to ride, even sticking my feet in those now-sinister toe loops. The ride home was fortunately uneventful, save the difficulty in holding the handlebars with two painful palms.

I put my bike in the garage and limped into the house. I was greeted by two of my four offspring. Immediately they recognized my need and summoned Daddy. And even though it was painful, it is nice to be the patient sometimes and not always the nurse.

So today, I feel a little sore all over, but I think I’m already on the mend. Don’t worry, though, the lesson is learned. Never go for a bike ride to distant parts without formal training in military tactics and a helmet. If you still insist, at least cut the dang toe straps off first!