Downstairs Get a Bucket

I don’t usually relieve myself in the master bathroom.  There’s a leak in the toilet and you need to turn the main drain on and off.  We tried to have it fixed once.  They came and suggested it was complicated.  I’ve forgotten just what the diagnosis was.  But this morning I went in and checked my messages in the early morning fog and felt my body settling.  There was toilet paper and so I proceeded with my business and turning the nozzle to let the water in so I could flush. 

Downstairs then, I settled into what was the brief antediluvian period of my morning.  Read the New York Times.  Consider the front page of the Washington Post.  And . . . there’s that sound again.  What is that?  At the outset of winter, I think we had a family of sparrows that moved into one of our heating ducts, somehow.  Were they back again?  Walking out in the living room I noticed two steady pours of water coming down from the ceiling. 

Upstairs the bathroom and adjoining closet were completely flooded.  The nozzle I’d turned and somehow filled the toilet and kept going for the last twenty-five minutes.  Turn the nozzle back, firstly.  Downstairs get a bucket.  You’ll need three.  Move the couch.  Pull out the rug.  Back upstairs, my wife must have headed to bed late.  She wasn’t stirring.  I got every towel in the house and laid them all down to soak up the inches-deep water and then rung them out in the bath tub. 

An hour later, still in the dark, I settled back down, finally, to my Saturday morning.  The dripping in the living room had largely stopped. The kitchen still needed cleaning from my hosting a dinner the night before.  But it would all have to wait.  The flood had affected my mood.  Everything seemed disorganized and it was hard now, to be productive. 

Saturday 03/09/19