Caution: White, Sober Girl Walking

I know I've been promising you all part two of the plumbing story for exactly a month now, so I've decided to stop being lame and write it. But before I do, I have a few things I want to share with you all.

First, for those of you who were following the LMCP story, I have an update. LMCP has crossed over. I'm sure this isn't the end of the saga with her, as she left quite a legacy behind, but I had finally succumbed to the fact that she was with me for life. However, her person and herself really stepped up last week and dealt with what they needed to deal with. In doing that, they figured out how to let each other go, and it was a really beautiful thing. Before she left, I promised her that I would make sure to always keep an eye on her person. Normally, when my spirit girls are not helping someone, they stay with me. Now, when they don't have a greater purpose at the moment, they stay with her person and not only keep him safe, but keep his stuff from bothering anyone else. Although it's quiet around here because my one girl that is always with me is now taking care of him, I know it's for a bigger purpose. Everything that needed to be taken care of around him was, and everything she needed, she got closure on. Although taking care of her person is going to be a life long job and entails more than just having my girls keep an eye on him, I am much less stressed without her seventeen and pregnant self hanging around. A lot of things are changing and rearranging, but I think it's a good change.

Second, my cat now has a rapper name. It's VM Double Dollar, but is shortened to be ever so fashionable at VM$$. Let me explain. The other day I left my phone lying on the coffee table. I thought it was safe. When I came back to it, my red light was going off. I looked at my phone, and it was a text from my friend asking what VM$$ meant. I never texted her that, so I was confused, until I looked at the previous text. It was indeed from me and had indeed said VM$$. The only reasonable solution was that a cat stepped on my phone and sent that. The only reasonable explanation for a name that fly was that it was my cat's DJ name. The problem is, I don't know which cat did it.

With that said, I want you all to know that I wasn't initially going to tell part two of the crazy plumbing story. But I decided I'm going to go for it full force. My mom called a plumber the same night as we found there was water leaking into my vent, and he promised to send someone out the next day. My mom chose a plumber that her clients had used. In the business she's in, she sees all the bills for the work that is done for her clients. She knew his rates and knew he had done good work. She had told the plumber that it had been the reason she had chosen him. You can see this is going to go wrong somewhere, yeah? Long story short, the plumber decided to completely rip us off and charge us a much, much higher price than he charged her clients for labor. Our job was about a sixth of a job that theirs was, too.  He also charged us for times they weren't here, the plumbers' lunch hours, and two hours in travel time a day when they're only coming from twenty minutes away in bad traffic. This is now an ongoing dispute, but I digress.

Day one started off fine. I was up way earlier than I wanted to be with some strange guy in my house. Since I was the only one home, the day soon became like a Nancy Drew novel, only the mystery was where the leak was coming from. The first assumption was that it was coming from under the house. The poor plumber crawled his bad self under there, couldn't get the whole way back, but couldn't see anything either. That led to some hemming and hawing, and finally the realization that there was going to have to be some cutting into the walls. I'm not going to lie, Plumber 1 and myself had some awesome adventures and laughs while trying to find this leak. He was kind of awesome.

By the end of the day, we had found the problem, the plumber had fixed it, we had a hole in our wall and floor, our washer and dryer pulled out, but we were gleeful. And then we realized we had more leaks. This apparently was a two plumber job for the following day. That was gauranteed to be debauchery filled.

Day two got a little hinky. Plumber 1 came back with Plumber 3. I could call him Plumber 2, but that just seems unoriginal. I open the door to greet the strange men into my house earlier in the morning than I care to be up, when Plumber 3 says to me: "I swear I didn't pee my pants. My wife didn't put the lid on my coffee the whole way this morning." And then he walks away. He didn't even see hi. Immediately, I knew I was going to like Plumber 3 just fine.

Because the plumbers didn't want to tear up more floor, they decided to see if they could get far enough under our house to find the leak. This didn't seem feasible seeing as the leak couldn't be found from under there the day before, but Plumber 3 was feeling particularly bold and decided to try it. While standing outside of the entrance to the crawl space under our house and having Plumber 1 ask me a question, me answer it, and him yell the answer to plumber 3, I was stung by a bee. It wasn't even ten am. It was going to be one of those days. For the record, I've never been stung by a bee in my life, but it was good to know I wasn't allergic to them. Because we all know there's no better time to find out if you're allergic to bees or not than when you're alone with two strange men in your home.

They finally surmised they had no choice but to make another hole in the floor in another room. The problem was that it was a ninety something degree day, and the room they had to work in was land locked by other rooms. The tiny window it did have in the one open wall didn't open anymore. The way the room was facing, there was no way to get air into it. I was afraid they were going to die, but Plumber 3 assured me they would be okay with some fans. I still started coming up with stories to tell the police just in case, and realized the truth was really the only thing that wasn't going to make me sound suspicious.

I went into the living room and decided to send incredibly funny emails to everyone I knew, because I didn't know what else to do with myself. You know how it is, the second you start a project, they need your help, so there was no use in starting anything. If you don't start anything serious, they don't need your help. Guess which rule this day followed. If you guessed one, you would be wrong.

As I'm really into my emails, minding my own business and what not, the plumbers suddenly start making a loud noise. I wasn't too concerned about it, however, I happened to catch my cat out of the corner of my eye. Slowly, I looked up at her and immediately regretted it. Just a mere foot from me on the corner of the couch, my kitty was giving me a look as if the say, "make that noise stop or I will murder you in your sleep." I didn't even know she was there until that very second, but now that I was aware, I couldn't be unaware. I was practicing my ninja skills in my head and slowly moving over while giggling nervously, when the noise stopped and she left the couch arm. It was a close one.

At the end of the day, all I was right with the zoo again, we had water pressure we had never had, were wondering how long these pipes had been leaking, and bid the plumbers adieu. By this time my mom had come home to monitor the debauchery. We were just so wiped out from all that plumbing they did in the ninety degree weather that we ended up sitting on the couch for over an hour and a half just so we could see this.

Let me just ask you something. What is it about three minute interviews on television shows you don't like or watch that make you want to sit down an hour early just to make sure you catch it? We all do it, especially with those dang morning shows. And did you ever notice that if it's something educational, you find something else to do right up until the very last second it comes on, and then you plant your butt in front of the television, missing the first minute of the show and not caring? What is up with that? And why is it that once you've sat on the couch forever and a Christmas to watch some three minute segment that you suddenly think your day is shot and decide to sit and watch television for the rest of the day? And in doing that, you end up watching a bunch of things you don't actually want to watch just because you still swear the day has been wasted by your acedia. There needs to be therapy for this.

But two days of sitting around, writing awesome emails, and making friends with plumbers who say odd things, I learned two things that I'd like to pass on. 

At one point in the day, someone texted me and asked me how I was enjoying the plumber's crack. I texted them back and told that that though it seemed impossible, our plumbers didn't have crack. They tucked their shirts into their underwear. Not that I was looking, but when you have to move around them in your own house, your eyes see things you're not trying to focus on. So take that, plumbers. It IS possible to not have plumber's crack. I know this is shocking news, so take a minute, breathe, take your medications; there's no need to get worked up. You have to look like Napoleon Dynamite to do it, but it's so worth it.

Plumber 3 cracked what I thought was a joke at one point in the day, and then I realized that not only was it not a joke, he had a point. He said that back in the day it was his dream to own a plumbing company. He decided that when he did so, he was going to hire one really tall guy and one midget. The tall guy, obviously, could reach all the things the normal sized guys couldn't without ladders. As for the midget, he could finagle himself into every situation that regular sized men couldn't. He'd be like the super ninja of plumbing. Plumber 3 said that the tall guy was negotiable, but the midget wasn't. I mean no disrespect to midgets, but Plumber 3 totally had a point with that.