Sunday, December 17, 2006

Adventures in Laundry

The usual Friday morning routine chez Breadner goes like this:
1. Wake up at 5:12 a.m by prying one eye open with chisel.
2. Be kissed good morning/goodbye by lovely wife (or somebody, anyway...eye has immediately shut itself with resounding THUD.) Say, "goodbye, love, have a good day, I love you very much." Notice how it comes out in one vowel-filled syllable, but fall asleep before can muster energy to correct.
3. Sleep in until ultradecadent hour of 7:00. Occasionally done on Sundays, never done any other day of week.
4. Turn on television to channel 958 and listen to one half-hour revolution of 680 News wheel. Catch up with large volume of news that dared to happen while sleeping.
5. Bound out of bed and into nice refreshing shower. Reflect again on how used to rate showers on several different scales measuring pressure, dispersion, and overall experience. Current shower still rates a solid 22 out of 30.
Get out, shake off, and dress.
6. Fire up computer en route to throwing first load of laundry into washer. Lose self in blogroll, eventually remembering to meander downstairs, insert freshly washed load into dryer, and toss in second load. (Other load--sheets and towels--waits until Sundays. Marvel at people who need to do eight plus loads a week.)
7. Go back to computer and poke the puppy until time to catch bus and go to work.

Last Friday, a new step was suddenly introduced into the Morning Dance, to wit:

6 and a half. Slosh through all-new ocean of brownish water that has appeared in laundry room.

By step six in the day, I am well and truly awake. I tend to eschew coffee on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, as a statement to the world that I am not truly addicted. The shower performs well in lieu of java so long as I don't need to go to work immediately, and I almost never go to work before noon on a Friday. So on this particular Friday, I didn't sleepslosh through the water, only noticing after I'd tracked it all over the house. No, I opened the laundry room door and let out with a heartfelt oh, shit!
Is it shit? Shit, I think it's shit. It's brown like shit. Does it smell like shit? [sniff] no, it has absolutely no odour whatsoever. Is it odourless shit? It's definitely gritty shit....
...hmmm.
Where's it coming from? I suppose I could have left the door to the washer slightly ajar. I've done that before, after all. But Jesus, that's a lot of liquid skidmark.
I called my wife at work. Honey? We have a problem.
She suggested I try another load, and this time make sure the door was closed.
Check.
Washer's filling up. Nothing yet. Water's draining into pipe below laundry sink, thence into main outflow line...
holy shit---
"Love!" I barked. "It's coming out of the drain in the floor!" I gave some serious thought to throwing up as a wave sluiced its way across the room, caressing my ankles in a wet brown kiss.
"Okay," she said, calm as always. "Now here's what I need you to do. Go up and turn the bathroom sink on. Also the kitchen sink. Come back down and see what you can see. If it's nothing, it's not a big deal. If there's water coming out...well, we'll deal with that if it does."
I hurried to comply, turning on the hot water tap two floors up and draining the load of soapy dishes I had left in the kitchen sink to soak. Back down I went, the dog regarding me curiously.
Nothing. I called back and told her. Whew. Back up to turn the tap off. Back down to check again. If I wasn't careful, I might be getting some exercise this morni...
SHIT!
This time, the wave wasn't so dirty, having doubtless been somewhat cleansed by the dishsoap which bubbled across the room.
I had a headache.
Something always comes up, I was thinking. First the computer fried itself and prevented our Ottawa getaway. Now here we are planning a vacation in February and when you get right down to the gritty-shitty I'm never going to get to go anywhere ever again--
Long story short, by this time I had to go to work. Eva called the city on the off chance this might be their fault. She explained what was going on and was interrupted halfway through. "Yup, we know exactly what that is. We'll be right out."
And they were. No more than two hours later I got a call. "Fixed", she said. Then the two most blessed words in the whole English language: "No charge."
It turns out our line was clogged ALL THE WAY TO THE STREET. With what, they weren't sure: the work order's marked, ominously, "unknown". Apparently we had done it, but not through carelessness or neglect, because the service was free. They came in, attached something electric from Plumbing Snakes On A Plane, and just like that, BONG! the line was clear. As was, miraculously, my head.
This is something the City of Waterloo does, 24/7/365. I guess I've lost the right to bitch about my municipal taxes this year.




No comments: