Proof We Are Idiots

I woke up on the morning of our third day in the house to Rick's frantic voice.

"Anna Marie! There's a leak in the ceiling!"

I stumbled out of bed and ran into the bathroom. Rick turned on the shower and water immediately started dripping from the ceiling. When he turned it off, the dripping slowed to a stop.

Panicked, I called our insurance company to file a claim and find out what we should do. It was still early, so our local agency wasn't open yet. We talked to somebody at the 24 hour claim center who told us to shut off the water. They also told us that a claims person would call us later in the morning.

Rick and I had no idea how to shut off the water line to the shower without shutting off the water to the whole house. Rick didn't think the water was leaking when it wasn't turned on, so we just left it on.

Rick was running late for work at this point, so he quickly finished packing up and headed out. In the meantime, I was feeling a little bit teary-eyed. Fiona was sick, 99% of our stuff was still packed, there were boxes everywhere, and our ceiling was leaking.

Less than 10 minutes later, Rick was back. He's a good husband.

Rick went up in the attic to try and find the source of the leak. When he positioned himself above where the water was dripping, he was perplexed when there were no pipes or even any evidence of water anywhere. We knew that pipes aren't commonly found in attics, but we thought maybe our house was weird. What else would explain the water?

While Rick was in the attic, I turned the shower on and off a few times. Water would immediately drip from the ceiling when it was on, but it would stop when turned off. Rick couldn't see anything from his vantage point when I turned the water on and off.

When he came back down from the attic, we discovered that the light above the shower stopped working as well. We figured that all the the water caused it to short.

At some point during the day, we learned that our insurance company only fixed the damage that the water caused to the house. Stopping the leak and fixing whatever was wrong with our pipes was up to us. Maybe most people realize this, but this was our first home owner's insurance claim and we had no idea what to do.

We finally got a plumber (I think his name was Jeff) over to our house. We brought him upstairs and turned on the shower. Sure enough, the water started streaming from the ceiling. The plumber reached up to the shower head, made a few adjustments, and the water stopped dripping.

It immediately hit me. There was a stream of water shooting crooked from the shower head. It was hitting the ceiling and then dripping back down.

Boy were we idiots. Relieved idiots. We couldn't stop laughing. Rick made Plumber Jeff promise not to tell anybody what happened. As soon as Jeff opened the door he yelled out into to street, "Hey everybody, check this out!" He thought he was pretty funny. I'm sure he laughed all the way home. Rick and I laughed for the rest of the night.