plumbing the depths

Last Thursday night Rolf stayed up quit late drinking with a friend of ours and around midnight Mark and I heard a ruckus in the bathroom, then some clanking and banging and cursing coming from the basement.

Friday morning I noticed a flood under the sink, as well as a pipe wrench.

What happened?

It seemed they had a little too much to drink and when he had tucked our friend into the sofa for the night, he went to brush his teeth and one of his crowns came off and went down the sink.

In an attempt to remove the J trap, in his altered state, he discovered that Charlie the shitty plumber we have used for years, due to my insane sense of loyalties, had used a plastic, rather than metal pipe when he put in the new drop trap thingy, when we got a new faucet.

Stupid Charlie! 

Long story slightly shorter...
The pipe cracked and the sink was leaking.
I phoned Mike, another plumber I know, but Mike was busy and suggested I call Jake.
Jake couldn't come until Monday afternoon.
So we spent the weekend with a bucket under the sink.
Today both Jake and Laura were to come at 1:30.

Jake to plumb and Laura to help me with some sorting and organizing for a garage sale.

1:30 came and went and around 2:15 I had to pee.

Badly.

Which is a real problem, since you can't hear a damn thing in this house, if you are a room away on the first floor.  Sound only travels well in a vertical pattern.  Lying in bed upstairs I can hear Rolf roll over, but I cannot hear someone knock, if I am in the kitchen.

So I opened the front door, and took the poodle with me to the bathroom (because he likes to escape).   When I walked back out, there was a very nice man standing on my front porch with a clipboard.

"Oh, my god! Thank goodness you are here!"

"I'm just here being groovy ma'am"  

hmmmm, then I realized that I have a silly little ceramic tile I made years ago that says

"be groovy or leave" 

 which Bob Dylan said without a hint of irony in his film Don't look back, and I thought it such a preposterous thing to say that I had to make up a bunch of tiles with it on them.

We both had a good laugh and I rushed him into the house.

I thought he looked a little wiry or slim for a plumber, and a bit too clean, but you never know these days, people do all sorts of diagnostic work with computers.  It wasn't until he busted out his clipboard and made his pitch about getting prostitutes off the streets, that I realized that the man in my living room was not Jake the plumber, but rather DeShaun, a door to door guy collecting money to help prostitutes and drug addicts!

Oh Dear, DeShaun, I think I mistook you for my plumber, that is why I had the door open, 
I was waiting for Jake the plumber! 
In fact he should be here ANY MINUTE NOW! I really need to have you leave!

I am doing good work, you can make any contribution, everything helps!

I am sure you are, and I love prostitutes, 
I mean I don't love the work they are doing, but you know, 
I would love to help, but I am super broke, 
I have this broken pipe, and just a couple months ago we had another flood, and the bottom line is that I am tapped out, no money, sorry. 

At that point I felt like a super rat for not helping the prostitutes, and I was also worried about what my husband would say if he found a fairly shady looking prostitute's advocate in our living room, or learned that I had left the door standing open, without even the dog to bark to alert me to a stranger at the door. 

After a great deal of salesmanship from DeShaun, I was able to get him out the door and lock up behind him, which I am sure was offensive, but what to do?  I am constantly being lectured about safety, which I often ignore, but at this point it felt best to error on the side of caution. 

Laura never did show up, but Jake did arrive around 4:30, replaced the broken part, reamed out the sink and the tub and now all is well and functioning nicely.