homeowning, joys of - part 3

sipes is our friend who knows things about houses and we’ve called upon him say 100 times since we’ve moved in for questions about this or that or this or that
so we were hesitant to go straight to him in
this instance but what choice did we have?
he came over.
snipped the sprinkler head off and capped it

problem done.
all we had to do was let it dry for 24 hrs and
have the water bureau come to take away their temporary line

CUT TO:
us at home the next Tues, awaiting the water bureau. they want us
to be home when they come just in case there is any issue and they have to turn the water off. they don’t come.

CUT TO:
WED am. no show. I go to work assuming they’ll come that night.

CUT TO:
WED PM. margaret has bicycled home and is hot and sweaty and in
need of a shower that she cannot take b/c the water
bureau has come when we were not home and turned the
water to the house back on and realized that the sprinkler head
was still leaking so they turned our water off and took
away the temporary line, leaving us with no water on the
night before a holiday that’s supposed to reach 90 degrees. margaret is not that joyous. nor am i. we don’t know what to do.

I call the main water bureau dispatch line. tell him what happened.
he does not appear to care and tells me I’ll need to get a plumber
to fix the problem before the water is turned back on. I tell margaret this. She does not accept it and calls the guy back. “Yeah, I just talked
with your husband” he says, grumbling at her as he eventually
capitulates. They will send someone back out but they have
a VERY busy night and it may be HOURS and HOURS b/c
there are higher priorities ahead of us.

When I get home I got out to the street and turn the water on
and sure enough water starts spraying from under the cap we put on the sprinkler. we didn’t cut down far enough in our haste. there’s nothing we can do about it now b/c it involves taking out a coupling
which is involved and beyond my skill set.

a couple hours later, a guy shows up and it turns out it’s the
first guy who helped us out on Sunday. He says no one can
believe that the other guy took away our temporary water. “Who would do that?” he asks sincerely. We do not know. We are as befuddled as he. but we now have water. we can take showers.
but we don’t. we get dressed and head out to have dinner
w/ sipes and his folks who are in town. we will shower later.

TO BE CONTINUED