uuughhh

Thursday morning, 5:08am: I am awakened by M whispering, "I think the pipes are frozen."

WHAT??!!@&*%$!

I shouldn't be all that surprised really. It seems like that should happen when you live in a house that feels like it's made of ice. Of course, he was right about the pipes being frozen, but since it was 5am, the bored guys at the water department, which is about a mile down the street, came over to check things out and make sure it wasn't frozen at the main. Turns out it was just us and our ice house with the frozen pipes. However, in checking out the main line, the water department put a big crack in it. So, frozen or not, we had no water. The water boys fixed the pipe before nine. My brother brought over some heaters to put under the house, then he and M spent most of the day in the crawl space. I took S to my dad's house. M and little bro ended up renting a 10000 BTU propane heater sometime in the afternoon as they realized that the little space heaters and the hair dryer weren't doing jack (rightly so as it was well below freezing). They got it rolling, and Drew left. Apparently, a pipe burst a few minutes later. M had been warned not to force the water main off by the water guys, so he had to call them again. They shut it off. My uncle called a plumber friend. Luckily, it was a connection in the pipes that had been rocketed off. No problem really. It was fixed in something like ten minutes. That was most of M's excitement for the day. Except...he went to dinner at Feather Nester's, and she tried to burn the house down with a magazine and the toaster. Or something like that.

I had a class in Nashville that night, so from my dad's house, I ran a few errands, including making a return at the mall. While I was exchanging one camera bag for another, the fire alarm went off. In the mall. Ever had that happen? I swear in a real emergency, we all would've died. You could see people sticking their heads out of stores, asking "what's going on?" No one really moved, but I was on the opposite end of the mall from my car, so I finished up my business and left. Of course, as I neared the food court, where I was parked, I realized they were evacuating everyone from that part of the mall. There were people standing outside in ten degree weather eating their nasty mall Cajun/Chinese food. It was a little odd. Then something like six fire engines came blaring into the parking lot.

So much excitement. I stopped into Starbucks on my way to class, and the barista started a little mini fire as soon as I stepped up to order. Luckily, he put it out before there was another fire alarm situation. So, that's one set of frozen pipes and three fires in one day for the Ouisers.

Friday morning, Mr. P's pipes were frozen. M was at work, so I was stuck with that one. Luckily, we weren't responsible for that little problem as his condo fees pay for that sort of maintenance. It took the whole morning, but it got fixed.

Last night, M was hit with some sort of stomach bug, so he's now completely out of commission. He keeps trying to pin it on the peanut butter recall or food poisoning or my chapstick (none of which are the problem). I don't think he could've written himself a worse week.

So, that's the last three days in a nutshell. Hope yours was better.