This has been an interesting week (and we’re only halfway through).

Monday evening as I was leaving my first time back at the pool in way too long, I checked my phone and saw I read this text from my roommate:

major issues…hot water heater overflowed & it’s leaking into hall

My response?

i’ll be home soon…running back into the pool to shower.

Priorities, right?  It wasn’t like I could go to work the next day without having showered in 2 days and with chlorine still in my hair.  I’m sure I’d be pretty rank.

Upon hearing the *drip* *drip* coming from upstairs, my roommate went upstairs to discover that the water heater overflowed.

[Sidenote: Why do we call it a *hot* water heater?  It's really heating cold water to make it hot water, right?]

She heard the drip upstairs because the water heater is in the ATTIC.

Whose idea was THAT?  ”Well, we don’t want to use this closet as it’s a good place to put coats.  I know, let’s put the 40-gallon tank of water in the attic!  That way, if something happens, it can do a lot of damage.”

By the time it was caught, the water had leaked through the attic “floor” (okay, just plywood), parts of the hallway ceiling and a bit into my ceiling and wall, too.  It had been leaking for a while, apparently.  A 3′ x 6′ section of hallway carpet was thoroughly soaked.  We filled up 8 towels worth of water before a friend came over with a carpet cleaner, which sucked up another gallon of water…and then it took another 36 hours of a fan on it to dry.

Thankfully, my roommate was paying attention, because the damage could have been much worse.

We thought we finally had it under control (even after we turned the water back on), when I see another drip from the ceiling.  What we thought was controlled apparently wasn’t…my roommate had to get up every 2 hours during the night in order to empty out the water (with a small juice glass and a couple of large bowls).

I, like a clueless new father, slept through the night, not even waking as she pulled down the attic ladder each time near my bedroom door.

I wasn’t entirely unhelpful, as I worked from home while the plumbers installed the new water heater so that she could go in to work to finish preparing for the first day of school.

By mid-afternoon Tuesday, we had a new water heater and could turn the water back on.  I tell you, it’s so weird to go without water when you’re used to it.  Made me thankful that I’m blessed to have clean water and indoor plumbing.

I’d be lying if this didn’t remind me a bit of my apartment fire 3 years ago this week.  I think it was using the same towels to mop up the water and throwing them in the same dryer (my current roommate bought the washer/dryer from a former roommate who is also her former roommate…yeah, we get around).

Though this was obviously a pain (and not a fun cost to incur to my still-new-to-homeownership roomie), it could have been much worse.  I’m glad that it happened when it did, and not a day later, the night before school starts.  What a nightmare that would have been!