Early in my marriage (one random day in January) I decided to take a day off from work because I had a nasty head cold and I just wasn’t feeling quite like myself, something was certainly off. It was either me being totally hormonal or it could have been the fact that my husband and I were also entertaining some house guests at the time and I was beginning to get irritable.
We had some of his family members visiting from Europe and you know how much work it is to have out of town guests (not only were they out of town, it was their very first trip to America. Yeah, THOSE kind of non-stop house guests).
Anyway, my husband wanted to take our “out-of-town-here-for-the-first-time-in-america-oh-my-god-i-want-to-see-everything-guests” to see the Statue of Liberty. But let’s not forget to note that it was a whopping 5 degrees outside that day with large amounts of snow on the ground and I sure as hell didn’t feel like riding the ferry and staring at Lady Liberty in that crazy cold weather.
If I was going to take a day off from work, it certainly was NOT going to be spent in frigid NYC weather with my husband’s family. No, my day off was going to be filled with lots of warm cups of coffee, comfy slippers and tons of senseless television – in an empty house.
So I bid my husband and his family farewell at the door and I told him I would call him later. You know, because I was feeling a bit under the weather myself – so much so, I even took a pregnancy test.
Ahem.
Excited to have the whole day ahead of me all to myself, I was SO thrilled to begin planning the epic news of how I was going to tell my my husband that he was going to be a father. Before I could even begin planning how I was going to do it, I threw in a load of laundry and made myself a cup of tea. This sure was going to be a perfect day off. That was until the moment I saw water seeping out from under my laundry room door…
I ran over and opened the door to find out what seemed to be 8 million gallons of water ejecting from the washing machine directly onto my hardwood floors. The water was shooting out erratically from a pipe behind the machine and I just couldn’t make it stop.
I was a fairly new bride, maybe not one of the most domestic chicks you’ll ever meet – but I was always pretty confident when it came down to doing the wash. But, I had *no idea* why water was gorging from the water line – all I knew was that I had to make it stop but every second that passed, gallons and gallons of water continued to gush onto the floor.
Sloshing my way toward the basement door, I ran downstairs to grab a bucket of some sort – I thought perhaps I could contain some of the water in the bucket and then proceed to dump it out onto the snow covered ground. I know, not the most brilliant idea – but at the time (in the total of the two minutes I had when this whole thing went down), that’s all I could come up with. But as I was down in the basement for about two seconds, I knew I had even bigger problems.
The water spewing from my machine upstairs was now seeping through the hardwood floors and the water was falling through to the ceiling below directly into my basement. And it was falling onto all of the electrical cords down there – and that’s when I went into sheer panic mode. Not only did I probably completely ruin my floors, I now had this water issue oozing its way into my basement – and it was a clear fire hazard.
I couldn’t call my husband because he was busy showing his family around NYC so I had no choice but to call the police. By this time, the water was done spewing because the spin cycle had been complete, but the damage was already done.
The police finally came, saw the damage and walked over to my washing machine. After a quick investigation of the situation, it was made known that one of the pipes was frozen which caused the water to spew out – but the cop did point out one priceless little detail to me that day.
“You see this button on the machine?” the cop asked.
I leaned over to take a look.
And there were the words, clear as day.
“Pull to Start – Push to Stop.”
With one finger, the cop pushed the button in, turning the machine off in just one click. After some silence, I stood there in my sopping wet slippers and “Oh,” was pretty much all I managed to speak. I never felt so stupid in my life, I should have just blamed it on pregnancy brain.
And the cop’s parting words? “Well, at least you’ll know for the next time, right? Best of luck when your husband comes home.”
Ugh, the mere thought of telling my husband was beyond dreadful. There I was, surrounded by gallons of stagnant water, warped hardwood floors and a whole hell of a lot of explaining to do when the hubs got home.
Thank GOD I had the news that he was going to be a Daddy to share first. Otherwise, I’m not quite sure how that night would have all played out. Regardless, let me save you hours and hours of agony ladies – just know when to pull and push.
The end.
What a stressful situation! How awful to deal with that yourself, to be feeling sick, and have people staying at your house!
I’m still curious if the button would have worked, with the pipe being broken and everything. Just after we got married, our bathroom flooded (related to a pipe problem in the sewer line out beneath the road). I completely freaked out, but my husband just turned off the water with some little knob behind the toilet. He told me next time, to remember that. My only response was that there had better not be a next time.
It was SO stressful Katherine! That was part of my epic plan, I had to find a way to pull my hubs aside when he came home to tell him without letting his family (who were staying with us at the time) find out!!
As for the machine, the pipe that froze was the where the water gets dumped into to go out, so during the spin cycle, had I shut the knob, it wouldn’t have solved the problem, but at least the water would have stayed in the machine and not all over my floors. Once the water tried to get into that “return” part, it was frozen near the bottom, so I guess the pressure pushed all the water back up. Fun times.
It was one of those things I’ll never forget and I was inspired to blog about it when a friend asked me recently how I told my husband the news when I found out I was preggers for the first time. 😉
Aaaah, this strikes me as very similar to something I’ve done in the past. Very funny post! Although I’m sure at the time it wasn’t so funny!
Exactly! I can laugh now but at the time, I was stressed out!!
Ohh how happy I was to read this. Especially today. That’s totally something I would do. Today grease in our oven caught on fire and I had NO clue what to do. This close to spraying it with the fire extinguisher before hubs told me to just turn it off. Arg.
Cassie – Yes!! Let me tell you, this could be another post but I’ve also struggled with the oven as well. One time I thought it would be a good idea to “clean it” directly before using it for Thanksgiving dinner. Lemon scent. Let’s just say, good thing my mom was there to assist me. 😉
Oh my gosh! It’s great that you had good news to balance out the bad
Haha im sure it wasnt funny at the time but this story is priceless. I can totally see happening in this house too.
Oh this is so something I would do, my friend. xo
Oh, Heather! This made me laugh. We are so VERY alike! xo
Oh Lord, what a priceless example of pregnancy brain! So funny. Except for all of the water damage, of course. Ack.
Yeah, I really think the news about being preggers helped to smooth it over for me.
Hee! Ohmygoodness that SO would have been me!
(Although -ahem- Im pretty sure mine would have included a crazed phone call to Jason somewhere in there!)
xo
Ok, this post just got me ROTF with laughter. Ba ha ha ha. So dang funny. Push and Pull button! Believe me, you’re not alone in this. Once or twice we’ve done something similar. But just not involving the police. Gosh I can’t stop laughing….. Thanks for sharing.
Oh what a day! I totally would have done the exact same thing. When my panic brain takes over, it’s all downhill….
So funny! That is one eventful day, lady!
Oh my gosh I laughed out loud. I could feel your distress… And stopping the machine never entered my mind as I read your story!!! Thanks of sharing…
I had a similar situation, and of course, I blogged about it. I called it, “At Least I Didn’t Leave the Iron On,” meaning, I didn’t burn down the house.
What I “did” do, was to leave the mb sink faucet on and then walked the dog to the corner and back. Fortunately, we have recessed lighting in our kitchen and the water was able to escape through the holes. And, the sink faucet only puts out a limited amount of water per minute, or whatever, so the hardwood floors in the kitchen survived.
That’s quite a story and one that you have certainly not forgotten, and never will! lol