Wednesday was my day off and it did not get off to a good start.
I was in the bathroom and the furnace was running. When it stopped I thought I heard water running and the water pressure in the bathroom was low.
And I wasn’t running any water…
We’ve had problems with the hot water pipe to the kitchen sink freezing up this winter, but I hadn’t heard any water running when I’d passed through the kitchen, but I checked anyhow.
Nope. Not the kitchen. Still had cold water but no hot.
Now, one of our neighbors (we’re the center unit of a triplex) had managed to break pipes in her apartment and blow up the boiler, so at first I thought they were doing something over there, but, nope, no signs of anyone.
I started investigating, and found the source: water was pouring out of the porch ceiling. It looked like it was raining on the back porch.
So, I went out into the rain on the porch and can’t tell where it’s coming from except that it’s running between the boards on the ceiling.
On a hunch, since I could still hear water running through a pipe, I turned off the hot water to the kitchen and the rain slowed and stopped, and the water pressure in the bathroom went back to normal.
But then we had a drip inside.
This just keeps getting better and better…
The drip is coming not from a water pipe, but from where the vent pipe from the hot water tank joins the air intake (I think) for the furnace. I put a towel under it and then a bucket, but that drip stopped too.
Crisis temporarily under control, the next step was to notify the landlords. I have three numbers for the landlady and couldn’t reach her on any of them.
My roommate was at work, so I left her a voice mail (and a text) for her to call and have landlord call me, because I know she has the right number in her phone.
Roommate called back to see what was going on so I explained.
She called back again — landlord was tied up until 3:30, but since it’s not an emergency situation anymore, that’s fine. She got emergency leave to come home, though, so that’s even better.
So, I go up to my room to catch up on the world and try to settle down and do some writing.
No such luck.
Shortly after noon there is a knock on the door. The landlord stopped over on his lunch break to see what was wrong and how bad it was.
And he solved mystery.
Our kitchen is actually over the back porch. I knew this but didn’t make the connection to the fact that the pipes for the sink run up the outside wall and then make a sharp turn and go under the kitchen floor/over the porch ceiling before turning up to the sink. That’s where they’ve been freezing and that’s where the break is. (This also explains why the cold water pipe has been freezing up. As he pointed out, water lines three feet under ground have been breaking this winter.)
The good news is that it’s an easy fix and he can do it himself.
The bad news is that he can’t do it until the weather breaks, so we’ll be heating water on the stove to wash dishes for a while. (He’ll have to cut a hole in the porch ceiling, fix/replace the pipe, and repair the hole.)
Looks like we’ll be eating a lot of pizza…
(Okay, so there is a bright spot.)
Meanwhile, all of this is happening while I’m battling the cold from hell, so that little incident pretty much ate up my energy for the day.
So, needless to say, not much writing got done.
Actually, not much writing has gotten done this week at all. I’ve been too miserable to focus so I’ve been lucky to kick out a hundred words or so instead of a thousand. (What a difference a zero makes!)
But I will hit my monthly goal today. (Good thing, because tomorrow is the end of the month.)
In part because I’m feeling slightly better (although I’ve started coughing a lot this afternoon) and partly because I need to stay off FaceBook for a while because all of the Leonard Nimoy posts are making me cry (which is not exactly helping the sinuses).
Part of the problem (besides being sick) has been a struggle with an upcoming scene.
It’s a fight scene, which is bad enough, but the real problem is that I’m not sure where to put it.
So I did some brainstorming in 750words.com the other night. I still don’t know where to put it, but I’m pretty sure that it shouldn’t be the next thing I write: I need to show the lead up to it a bit so it doesn’t come out of nowhere.
I also need to decide who dies.
Novel Notes 