Today's a hair-puller

It's days like this that make me wonder why it is, after almost a year of working for my current employer, I'm still learning how to do my job. Then again, that probably has a great deal to do with why I still like my job.

In case you're curious, Valentine's Day went well. I framed one of our favorite wedding pictures (the one where Chris is standing behind me while I'm hanging off the monkey bars of the playground behind the church in my flowing white dress). I rented a movie that holds a place in the history book of our relationship, and I got us each a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream (Phish Food for him and Cookie Dough for me). This is a nod to our "friend ritual", which we practiced in the comparatively short time after we discovered one another's coolness and before we were officially dating -- a small slice of the "us" pie, but it may very well be impossible for me to overstate the importance of it.

Anyway, today, the real fun happened before I even got to work. I kicked off the morning right, boy howdy, with a fun little spelunking adventure under the house. It all started when I woke up at about 5 a.m. and had two thoughts:

1) "Ooh, too early. Closing my eyes again."
2) "Is it raining? It wasn't supposed to rain today."

Then I went back to sleep. Then I woke up again at 6:30 a.m.

1) "I could get up...or I could sleep for 30 more minutes. Yeah, I'll do that."
2) "I hope it quits raining so we can get some work done today."

Sleep. 7 a.m.

1) "All right, get up you lazy slob. Time to shower."
2) "I don't see any rain."

It was at this point that the alarms should have sounded in my head. But they didn't. It was morning, okay? I was half-a-bloody-sleep. So I stumble to the bathroom, sit next to the tub, and turn on the hot water. Believe me, I've seen low water pressure before, but this? Was low.

It was at this point that a mysterious floating iron skillet labeled "OBVIOUS" should have bludgeoned me atop the head. But it didn't. It was still sleeping soundly in its own plane of existence, oblivious to the call of duty summoning it to its hovering position over my unsuspecting cranium.

You see, sometimes, I'll turn on the water in the tub and nothing will come out. We don't know why this happens, just that if you try it a few more times, water will eventually begin to flow. So I just thought the tub was being weird. I turned it off and back on, off and back on. Then, somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered the soothing background noise that had been lulling me from true consciousness all morning: the gentle, comforting sound of water falling from the heavens. Or was it coming from the floor?

Finally, people, 2 + 2 equaled 4. Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh CHRIS! GET UP GET UP GETUPANDTURNOFFTHEWATERMAIN!!!

"Wha? Huh? Did you say...? Is it raining?"

As soon as I realized water was spewing from pipes beneath the house, I knew exactly where to look. So I summoned the landlord and informed him that the ingeneous galvanized compression fitting my father and I had installed to accomodate the dishwasher had finally let go. And it was ingeneous, guys. It's just that it relied on the Strength of Man to be adequately tightened, and I was there when the strength of man failed.

So Kris, the Tightener, and I, the Bringer of Light to Dark Places (i.e. flashlight holder), crawled through the depths of muddy, muddy, gross, muddy grossness and shut that bitch up for good. It was 8:30 a.m. That, ladies and gentlemen, is far better than a cup of coffee.