June 11, 2004

Let the River Run

Once upon a time, my house almost caught on fire, and it was George who saved it.

Remember how I was wondering if I am cursed by broken things?

Well, George came to the rescue again today when a pipe broke, the pipe that takes the water from the ground into the house.

It's been a long process, this pipe fixing affair.

There's been a pool of water for months collecting around the place where I use my hose, so I thought that it was just water from my drippy hose. But it was starting to gross me out, so I started hooking up my hose to another faucet, and the water stayed. I noticed that the knob was drippy, so I called George, who told me to tighten something with a wrench, which I did (and don't you know that I was very proud of myself), and the drip stopped.

But the water stayed. So I tried sopping it up with some towels (which my mother said is the dumbest thing she's ever heard in her life). The water stayed, and my towels and I got covered in stagnant water and mud. Awesome. I called George again, and I said, "George. Look. You have got to come and look at this. It's like the water is springing forth from under the ground. It's like I've got my own little geyser."

So George came on over, and I met him on my lunch break, and I put the dogs inside because they were about to chew through the fence to get to him (nice) and somehow we did not melt into goo in the suddenly sweltering heat of summer, and the moment he touched the pipe with the shovel, it exploded. Water, water everywhere. I just made the sign of the cross about ten times in thanks that this was all happening outside and not inside.

I asked George reasonably if my toilets were going to blow up and he clucked in his stoic handyman way and said, "Um, no." He went back and forth to the hardware store a few times and got filthy and was overall very calming. George, who does not raise his voice or break a sweat while handling burning wire or sticking the entire upper half of his body into the ground to shut off the water line. George. George is truthfully kind of hot even though he could probably be my grandpa.

So, $135 and two hours later, disaster averted. I thanked him for saving me from both fire and flood, and he clucked again and left.

In other news, if you've sent me an email lately, odds are that I owe you one. Shameful. Tonight I'm furniture shopping with my sister and tomorrow we're attacking her apartment and organizing that shit. Tomorrow night's the baseball game. Sunday's Harry Potter. A good weekend looms ahead. Next week, it's back to the gym if I plan to sport a swimsuit on the 4th of July, the weekend of the potential fix-up. To celebrate, I just ate a pack of rolos. Happy Friday!


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