When It Rains, It Pours

In one of my recent blogs, I talked about our trip from Michigan to Arizona, full of calamities and strife. If you missed that one, you can find it here. Well, the story wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t continue with the post trip details. It only gets better.

When my husband returned with the moving truck, the kids and I were happy to get out of the cramped hotel we had been staying in for over a week. My husband had been living in a moving truck for two days, so he was ready to sleep in a real bed again.

We moved in on a Saturday and the gas for the house was not scheduled to be turned on until after the weekend (because of a mixup). My husband assumed the landlord hadn’t turned off the heat in her name yet. Well she had and the nighttime temps dropped to the low 40s with a house intentionally designed not to hold heat. It doesn’t sound so bad, but we were actually cold with the house temp about 60. So much for a cozy night in our new home. Even worse was the realization that we couldn’t take a hot shower for another two days.

As we spent the next two nights shivering, we were really looking forward to Monday.

Monday night, we sent our daughter upstairs to take a shower. It hadn’t been used yet because there was no hot water. I was cleaning up after dinner and heard this weird squealing sound. It sounded a lot like my son’s microphone when he holds it to his cheek or it’s up against another toy. It was a terrible sound that wouldn’t stop and I told my son to find that darn microphone and turn it off.

But the noise continued and it sounded like it was coming from the master bedroom. I quickly went in to see what was going on and I screamed loudly. The noise was coming from the smoke alarm and there was water gushing out of it from the ceiling. After the scream of terror, I waited for my husband to come running but he was nowhere to be found. I frantically called his name and he casually responded with a “Yeah?”

Now I was annoyed. I could have been hurt. Or there could have been an intruder who climbed in through the bedroom window, ready to hold us hostage. And this is the response I get? He still hadn’t gotten up from his chair by the way.

My daughter would later reenact his response by telling me, “Yeah, when you were screaming, dad didn’t budge. And then when you called him, he slowly got up from his chair and slooowly walked to the bedroom.” She thought it was pretty funny. Maybe he thought I was just screaming about a scorpion or something.

Back to the story: I screamed to my husband that water was coming out of the ceiling and getting all over the floor. I’m sure he would describe this as my Edith Bunker voice, because apparently to him I sound like Archie Bunker’s wife when I’m upset, frantic or frightened.

He must have thought I meant a trickle, because he still didn’t exactly rush in. To understand my terror and why the floor was the first thing on my mind, you must understand the lectures we received about the floor from the landlord.

“These are new laminate floors. You cannot get them wet,” she warned us sternly when we met her a few days prior to get the keys. “If your children waste a drink or you get a drop of water on the floor, you must dry it immediately. It will swell up and…”  She then went on a rant that I can’t remember but I really, really understood not to get the floor wet because bad things happen.

So, my husband finally moseyed on in the room, and saw what I was so frantic about. He realized it was coming from the bathroom that our daughter had taken a shower in. He runs upstairs to see if there was water on the floor and how this could have happened. I grabbed every towel in the house to protect the gosh darn floors!!

I took a video after the gushing became a trickle and we all calmed down a bit.

My husband found that there wasn’t a flood upstairs so there had to be a leak coming from the tub and into the ceiling.

I’m at this point fussing to myself about how the landlady is going to blame us for whatever happens to these laminate floors. I was obsessing about floors when we had our own personal Niagra Falls in our bedroom! Forget about the floors, woman! I then sank into a Nancy Kerrigan style “why, why, whyyyy???” session of self pity and despair. “Why does all this stuff keep happening to us? I don’t get it!!”

The waterfall eventually stopped after what seemed like an eternity and we dried the floor as best we could. We informed the landlord of the situation and she had it fixed the next day. Ok, another setback, but it’s all over, right? Not quite.

The following day, I’m taking a late shower and the smoke alarm goes off again. What in God’s name is it this time? I run out of the bathroom and there’s no water, just a smoke alarm going off, obviously damaged by the water flowing through the wires two nights before. I run into the garage to get a ladder, still dripping wet in my bath towel. I drag the ladder into the bedroom, fearful of going deaf from the now two smoke alarms going off. I’m pulling and pushing and can’t get the ladder open! I really don’t know how to open a ladder?

The kids are outside playing with the screen door open and I suddenly have this vision of a neighbor hearing the alarms going off and calling the fire department. I imagine firefighters busting the doors down while I’m half naked to fight the non-existent fire. After ushering the kids in the house and closing all doors, I throw some clothes on just in case and start back trying to open the ladder. I finally got it open and ripped the battery out of the smoke alarm. But it’s still blaring and my ears are ringing by now. I truly wondered if I would be able to hear after this.

I had no idea why it wouldn’t shut up and uttered a few expletives. I reluctantly climbed back up the ladder and started twisting and pulling until the whole thing came off of the ceiling, still attached to the wires. Finally, silence.

We didn’t have anymore bad things happen after that, but we did have a strange dog enter our house through the garage. I thought it was our next door neighbor’s, but turns out it was just some random dog. I just can’t make this stuff up!

Life has calmed down and we’ve had no more crazy incidents. But it really did have us wondering if our life was ever going to get back to normal. Thankfully, it has. We are finally unpacked, soaking in the sun and enjoying a drama free existence. I better go knock on some wood before that changes.

Featured Image credit: dalioPhoto