Fuck

An expletive! A sweet, short, unmistakable response to life at the moment. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

Surely I'm not alone in this; many American families are treading water, waiting for the one big emergency to derail their dream, to cut their lifeline, to pull them into the dark depth or the real estate market, bankruptcy, homelessness. I felt a shudder when we paid $900 in vet bills. I felt a chill up my spine when our car insurance went up. I even teared up when our energy bill was $422. But those were apparently a warm up for the real catastrophe.

A pipe. Yes, our real emergency is a pipe. I guess the sound of water was so low we didn't notice it at first. By the time we did, it sounded like a woosh, like air traveling through the walls. "It's just the water heater pulling water," my mother said. I'm sure, I'm sure. I was sure. At least until early this week when I went into the bathroom, stood still, and realized our little woosh had turned into a running faucet. And that's when it came. "Fuck."

So the good news we're not getting a leak inside the house. That's also slightly bad news since we have no water to show us where the leak is. What that means is our trusty plumber is going to have to do some exploratory plumbing. If we find the right pipe on the first try, not too bad. If not, it's going to run up until we do. We're talking $2000+. Now, there's another long term solution. Repipe the house. That's going to run us $6000 but it'll be guaranteed by our plumber and, of course, all new pipes (and new hose outlets, etc) means they shouldn't break down for the next twenty years. The problem with either option is also the living arrangements. We'd seriously have to be in a hotel for a week. It's not looking good.

We can't even afford the first option. So now we're going to have to sit down and figure out how we're going to do this. Hopefully the house won't float away while we reach a decision.

Sigh. Dammit. Shit.

Fuck.


Edit on 10/25/2008: We went with repiping the house and the whole process starts on Monday the 27th. I feel much better about it than I did when I typed this, thankfully.