water, water everywhere

so, janelle and i had just gotten to bed and were blissfully drifting off to sleep when, with a jarring jolt we were awakened by the insistent ringing of the telephone.

i was fumbling with the alarm clock, trying--unsuccessfully--to turn the alarm off when janelle gently said, "it's the work phone, darling" and answered it: "killam properties, quinpool tower."

there was a flood. expletive deleted.

we dressed in a hurry and descended to the location. as we rounded the corner, i saw an inch deep river of murky water streaming down the hallway towards us and panicked.

thankfully, janelle is a hero. she rolled up her pant legs and marched right into the water, taking the vacuum and battling the onrushing waves. meanwhile, i got on the telephone and called henry, woke him up and confused him. then i took a turn at the vacuum while janelle went upstairs to wake joy.

joy made some more phone calls, and it turned out that there was nothing the plumber could do, so we just had to manage it the best we could ... visions of staying up until sunrise vacuuming this flood flashed through my mind.

the flood was coming from the toilet. yes, gross. and little brown chunks were floating around.

we really have to be thankful for the tenants, though. they were troopers. they took turns vacuuming, they laughed and made jokes about it, and really made us feel comfortable and kind of happy to be helping. that was nice. normal tenants would have been angry and would have taken it out on us. normal tenants are the kind of people that deserve to get flooded. these people were so nice, they SURE don't deserve it. but i'm glad it happened to them and not to a normal tenant...

finally, the water stopped flowing from the toilet. but that was after joy knocked on a bunch of people's doors and told them to turn their water off and not use any until morning. and after that, it was just a matter of vacuuming up all the puddles. we must have emptied that industrial shop-vac at least thirty times. maybe more.

we did what we could, and headed back home. rather uneasy that another call might wake us up just as we went to sleep...