Ain't got no water.

There's been water building up in the bottom of our refrigerator for months - we've replaced the ice maker and the seal around the doors and a whole slew of other things that Jimi did but I don't know what they are.  (He wrote them on the whiteboard in the kitchen for the repairman, and I could totally go in there and tell you all about it, but I'm guessing you care about as much as I do, which is way less than the effort it's already taken to write this much about it.)  Whew.  Anyhow, this has been enough of a problem that we've been researching new fridges and tentatively calculating that purchase into our upcoming expenses.  (Walk through a puddle in your kitchen floor in your footie-pajama'd feet and tell me what lengths you'd go to to make sure that didn't happen anymore.)

So today, the repairman came out.  I pointed at the whiteboard and said "Have fun, I'll be on the porch" and I took my book and I went there.  A few pages into my book, he came out and asked if I knew where the main water shut-off was.

Um.

Yes!  Yes, I do!  State Farm sent me a tag that said "Main Water Shut Off" or something like that right after we moved in, and I proudly identified the appropriate pipe and affixed the tag.

Of course, the main water shut-off lives in the deepest, darkest, dankest corner of the basement - the one where the BIG spiders live.  It took every ounce of my self-control not to scream as I plunged my hand through the gauzy webs to reach the knob - that shit was straight out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, yo.  But I did it, I turned off the water, and proudly yelled up the stairs to the repairman.  He said something about that not being the right one, something about "one quarter inch pipe" and in my head, i was looking at the pipe in front of me and trying to remember how measurements work...

The pipe he was looking for was the itty bitty copper one that comes out of the back of the fridge and down into the basement.  It's way smaller than the main water line, turns out.  But he told me to shut off the main water line, I swear on a stack of holy books.   I watched him turn the little knob on the little copper pipe and then walked back over to the main shut-off and turned the water back on...

And water went spraying everywhere...or, it would've, if the cheesecloth-like webs hadn't contained most of it like an umbrella.  As it was, it was going everywhere for a radius of like six inches, and then in a steady stream onto my basement floor.  I watched, dumbfounded, as a puddle formed and crept toward the water heater.  I shook myself, and tried to turn the knob back the other direction - the spray slowed, but didn't stop.  The part, I don't know what it's called, but I knew it was broken.  Fuck.  I grabbed a towel and threw it onto the puddle, and then I felt dumb, because what the fuck was a towel going to do against the Louisville Water Company's supply for the South End?  So I got a bucket, and then I felt like the fucking champion of the world, because when contained in a bucket, the spray and stream didn't seem quite so threatening.

I looked at the repairman and said, "This is bad, isn't it?"  "Yeah." was his only response.

Fuck.  I said that, too.

Back upstairs, I learned that while I'd been turning the knob hither and thither trying to make the water stop and finding towels and buckets and such, the repairman had located the MAIN main water shut-off - the one that apparently lives somewhere in my front yard between a tree and the curb, but I'm not sure which tree or which curb or where exactly...and neither is Jimi.  (Oh, happy Time Change, everyone!  It's dark at 6 now.  That should make finding this mysterious MAIN shut-off a little more fun.  As if this adventure wasn't fun enough.)

So Mr. Repairman had turned off the water to my home, and then he told me that he'd fixed my refrigerator - the drain line was clogged, so he blew it out, and now it's fine.  All better.  OH, and when he was pushing the fridge back into place, he broke the water line feeding the ice maker, so I'm going to need to get that replaced.  And the thing with the main shut-off, of course.  He apologized for the trouble, and presented me with a bill for $80.

"Um, so you broke my water line?  Shouldn't you, I don't know, fix it?"

"Nope.  That's YOUR plumbing.  They don't even keep those parts on the truck."

Fuck.

Jimi came home early from work and got started on the fix, but right now, at 7 o'clock, there's no water in my house.  He's at the hardware store, for the second time, getting something or another...and water.

Did I mention I started my period this morning?  I wouldn't normally, but somehow, that just seems like the cherry on this fucking sundae.

At least I have beer.  And processed, pre-packaged food.  And we filled the pet water this morning before work.  First World Problems, Natalie.  First World Problems.  I live in a place where even a lack of water is a temporary first world problem...but it sure feels good to bitch every now and then.  :)