My water world
by Susan Rodriguez

After moving into our new home, we ended up having a lot of water trouble. There was a musty, wet odor coming from the kitchen. I noticed I had a little more spring to my step, and it wasn’t from my new sneakers. The floor was spongy. The new appliance somebody installed (I won’t say who the “somebody” was, but the clue is he lives with me) wasn’t put in right or working correctly. Water had leaked under the layers of 35 year old linoleum, 50 year old tiles, all the way down to the basement. Fortunately we had insurance, and they paid for it—and then dropped us as policy-holders.

The next episode was the floods in the basement. The water was five inches deep. The kids thought it was fun to launch their Scout regattas. Do you wonder where the water went once the malfunctioning sump-pump began working? Apparently the water went into our neighbor’s yard. We got a letter from the township that we needed to take care of this problem or there would be consequences. Not to mention our neighbor accused us of harboring mosquitoes.

It seems that there was a little more to be fixed when I felt a sharp stinging pain on my right shoulder, as if something had scalded me. It turns out the plumbing had been leaking steaming hot drops. We have a bandana around it to prevent further incidents.