It was high noon on January 22nd.
Oh, wait. Maybe there should be a little back-story here. I haven't been to the office in nearly five weeks. The first three were spent on vacation. It's amazing how quickly you can eat up three weeks of vacation time. A little better than a week in Costa Rica, a week or so in Bend, and voila! you're barely acclimated back to your own bed before you're staring at an email from your boss. Also, I'm lucky enough to have the freedom to work from home most of the time., and since I'm in the process of transitioning to a new position (currently one without a supervisor!) my calendar is, to say the least, barren. So the last two weeks, well, week and a half really, have been spent at home.
Which brings me back to noon on January 22nd, at which time I was gathering towels to wash. I paused in the kitchen to pick up the few that were dirty in there. While I was putting the dishes on the drainboard away I heard the unmistakable sound of a lot of water gushing over round rocks. Crap. It was twenty two degrees (Less than any degrees if you use the Centigrade scale!) this morning and there's only one thing that sound could mean. Slipping on some waterproof garden shoes and fighting my way past the dogs who should have been enjoying the sunshine I expelled a huge breath and prepared for what a lot of expensive water/ice damage looked like.
Stepping around the corner I immediately saw that it wasn't as bad as I had feared. The pipes that run to the outside of the house are all mostly indoors so I don't get too worried about pipe bursts. It's not like it ever drops below zero here. Ice storms sometimes cause me a little concern, but they generally only happen once a year and are never a complete surprise. What I see is the complete failure of the insulation on the insulated (and "guaranteed" not to freeze) timer/splitter thingy. It had frozen and was spewing water all over the side yard (and by yard I mean the river-rock covered area on the side of the house). No big deal. Remove the broken piece, turn off the water, bada bing bada boom and it's back to the kitchen where I left off.
Towels gathered once more I set off for the laundry room downstairs. When I got near the bottom of the stairs I realize that my adventure is far from over. Flowing from the laundry room and pooling at the bottom of the steps before making a meandering journey into Tiff's room is what appears to be the Willamette river. Back up the stairs for waterproof shoes again.
First things first. I step into Tiff's room to see what damage has been done to stuff I don't own. This goes against every grain of my being as I have some fairly deep-seated privacy issues. Not just about my own space, but about protecting the privacy of other peoples' space as well. But Tiffany just bought a new laptop and I need to know if I can save it, not to mention my obligation to clean up the water. Of course the water has followed the wall across the room and started edging under the bed. I am just lucky enough that it hasn't crested the little island where her laptop is perched on its edge.
On an aside: People always ask me why my laptops are stored on their edges rather than what would seem to be the more correct (and certainly more conventional) position of flat, as if in use, with the lid closed. The reason is that I never turn them off and my work one doesn't have a sleep mode because it has to work with a docking station, which means that it needs to run its fans periodically. Laying it flat on a carpet means it's trying to suck clean, fresh, cool air through dirty, warm carpet fibers. Standing it on its edge makes sense, and has become a habit for me. Apparently I've passed it on to others which is, ultimately, what saved Tiff's laptop.
So I picked up her computer, checked it for damage (whew! none) and put it safely on the bed. I checked under the bed to see how far it had seeped, removed her backpack from a small puddle, put up a towel barrier and returned to the laundry room to deal with the larger problem.
What does one use to clean up gallons (about fifteen or so, as measured by the bucket I used) of water spread out over an uneven floor? Towels get very heavy and the cold water makes them difficult to wring out more than a few times. A few months ago I fell for the ZORBEES! (annoying little bearded fucker) commercial. They actually do work, just like the loudmouthed little shit Billy Mays yelled that they would. But still, fifteen gallons is a lot of water and fingers get stiff and cold, and sure they hold a lot of water, but that's still only a couple pints or so, which adds up to a lot of bending and wringing so the only real solution is the sponge mop. Sure it only absorbs half (or less) of the big ZORBEES! rag thing, but your fingers stay warm and dry and your back doesn't acquire any unnecessary aches or pains.
How long does it take to pick up fifteen gallons of water with a sponge mop? Just under ninety minutes and then my day was back o track. Laundry, check. Herbal conditioning pack for my abused hair, check. A well earned cup of tea and a couple chapters of a good book, check.
Tiff came home and we blah blahed for a bit and then she started cooking dinner while chatting with her grandma. I went back to the living room to read and idly poke at the plastic covered mud on my head when suddenly I hear "WHOOMP!" and a surprised scream. I looked up just in time to see a flash of orange emanating from the kitchen. Never a good thing.
She had been heating oil to fry something and splashed some water into the pan and it flared up into a fireball that left soot in surprising places.
No one was hurt and, again, all the stuff survived, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the fridge doesn't go out or we'll be looking at famine next.
