Ruptured Pipe Yikes

It's never a good feeling to be covered in mysterious liquid.

Two weekends ago I hopped upstairs at the end of the first quarter of the WNBA game my wife and I were watching, just for a speedy-quick restroom break, and went skidding headfirst into the bathtub because the floor was sopping wet. It's never a good feeling to be covered in mysterious liquid, especially mysterious liquid in the bathroom, super-especially when that mysterious liquid is dripping down from the ceiling. This liquid, specifically, was coming out of the light fixture. I thought, "Huh. Water(?) and electricity is not a good combination." And then I thought, "Shouldn't that light shade have caught this water(?) like a bowl?" And then I realized the light shade had caught a freaking half-gallon of water(?) and it was spilling over the edges of it in a nice steady drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. 

My landlord decided, over the phone without even seeing the problem, that our upstairs neighbors had simply forgotten how to use a shower curtain. I insisted that even if they were showering with no curtain at all, just wild and free like they were enjoying some kind of waterfall on a deserted island, we shouldn't have water(?) falling through the ceiling. We were advised to put down a bucket and hope the leaking stopped, as is the standard operating procedure for all New York City tenants in the face of home disasters.

Shockingly, ignoring the drip did not fix the issue. In fact, the issue quickly revealed itself to be a full-blown Problem. The drip became a stream. When our upstairs neighbors showered, used their kitchen sink, etc. it rained in our bathroom. Even though I prayed very earnestly — “please don't let it also be the toilet, please don't let it also be the toilet, oh Lesbian Jesus and Our Mother The Moon, please don't let it also be the toilet” — it was also the toilet. 

Alas, my landlord's optimism persisted. A plumber came over to re-caulk the upstairs neighbors' bathtub. Then my landlord hung up plastic sheets in their bathtub and made it look like a serial killer's lair. The suggestion that our upstairs neighbors were, perhaps, "walking too hard" on their bathroom floor was my personal favorite explanation for the flood. It, also, was incorrect. 

On Day Five of The Great Wet Debacle, some qualified men with a ladder and some very loud tools finally arrived to assess our caving-in bathroom ceiling and diagnose the problem as a ruptured pipe. A ruptured FRESH WATER pipe. (An important distinction for my mental well-being.)

My wife said, "It's getting worse!" And my landlord said, "Yes, well, holes in pipes don't get better." And my wife glared like, "Then why did you spend 48 hours duct-taping Glad Cling ‘N Seal all over the place?!" And my cats cowered inside every available nook and cranny and hole and satchel because our house has not had people in it in many, many years and they didn't really care for any people besides my Dungeons & Dragons group before that anyway. (Probably because my Dungeons & Dragons group always heralded a large and unattended spread of cheese and deli meats.) 

I, myself, also did a fair bit of cowering, sitting hunched in the stairwell at all hours of the day and night, wearing my KN95 mask and not even lowering it to sip on water, hoping hoping hoping to avoid getting caught up in this fresh wave of summer Covid and losing the four years of slow progress I've made on my Long Covid journey. 

Two amazing things did happen during these disastrous weeks. The first is that one of the workers whose first language was not English asked if me and Stacy are "gym teachers," and I couldn't decide if he meant "lesbians" or if he was just baffled by the number of WNBA basketball games that were constantly on the TV in our house. And the second thing is that I found out our neighbors call Stacy and I "Downstairs Moms." As in, "Downstairs Moms said we didn't tie up our recycling correctly but they fixed it for us." And, "Downstairs Moms said they'll bring my package inside when it gets delivered." Probably they also say, "Stop stomping! It's midnight! I don't want to get a text from Downstairs Moms," but they didn't tell me that part. 

I also drew the Queen of Swords several times during my daily tarot card pulls, which I took to mean that I had free rein to do a stabbing if I deemed it necessary. I didn't — but it's always nice to know you have the universe's permission to poke someone in the gizzard with a sword. Takes a little bit of perfectionist pressure off, you know? 

Our bathroom ceiling is not fixed, but the water has stopped dripping! The pipe itself is fixed! But the workers can't come back until mid-August, so right now there's just a giant hole that's kind of patched with sheetrock, and a lot of bulging spots on the wall. We also still can't use the electricity in the bathroom, but that's okay because I bought a battery-powered lantern and my graying hair frankly looks radiant by its light at night in the medicine cabinet mirror. Like. I know I wasn't meant to be born before this internet age of golden gayness, but wow, I would have been as handsome as Anne Lister in the candlelight days of yore. 

Anyhoodle, all this is to say: Thank you for being patient with me as this Cattywampus newsletter has been a little more sporadic than usual lately. I'm determined to make sure you do get at least one post a week, and this week you'll get more than one because I watched Angelina Jolie in Hackers (1995) for the first time (holy smokes), and when I was hiding from the unmasked workers in the stairwell I jotted down a ranked list of WNBA mascots in order of whether or not I could beat them in a fight, and in this current WNBA desert, I know you need that content as much as I do.