It all started with the possessed shower.

You see, I was enjoying my morning by taking a nice warm shower when I noticed that the shower drain wasn’t draining.  “Uh-oh,” I thought. Then it started draining, “Phew.” Then it stopped draining, and started, and stopped and, “Oh my God my shower is possessed!” No one stays in a possessed shower so, of course, I jumped out. Only to find that the demon in the pipes was also controlling the toilet which, while nearly empty of water, was still pulsing with a bubbly gurgle. And that is right about when I heard the kind of noise nightmares are made of. The sound of a geyser in the house.

Soaking wet, in nothing but my towel, I flew downstairs to discover that while the jury was still out on a poltergeist in the pipes, I did indeed have a geyser in the basement. A giant pulsing geyser that erupted an inch below the ceiling, helping it to spray the water in a ten foot diameter circle – every twenty seconds. Luckily for me I didn’t get any wetter when I dove into it to start shutting off all the water valves I could find. Sadly, when the water main didn’t stop the erupting, I was forced to the unhappy conclusion that the geyser originated in the septic pipe.

I swear I did not take this picture for a future blog post. I took it to send to John to try to clear up our muddled conversation. The blog post is just a happy coincidence.

Meanwhile, while I’m running around in the cold basement being sprayed by water I’d rather not think about in nothing but a towel talking to John on the phone trying to figure out how to make the geyser stop, Ivy is building legos. And then she’s bringing them down the stairs and interrupting my panicky phone calls to show me that she built a building with a roof for all the animals to live on.

I was not suitably impressed.

Perhaps it was because I was so cold my knees were knocking together and I still had geyser issues.  But the fantastically roofed house was brushed aside and as I was unable to turn anything else off, I ran for clothes and called my Dad. Because that’s what girls do when their husband is out of town and they have a geyser.

Dad and I had a pleasant conversation where I ineffectively described things and he told me to do (and I tried to do) unpleasant tasks that involved both standing under the spray of water and sticking my hands into the water sump crock trying really hard not to think much about the source of the water. Unfortunately, all that got me was ickier, wetter and brought us to the realization that I really needed a plumber.

So, I took my soggy self out the door, hat-less and jacket-less (because I’m a moron) through the snow to the neighbors’ barn, where I found my fantastic neighbor happily enjoying the peaceful morning while making a phone call. Or he was until his crazy neighbor flew down looking for a number for a plumber and a could-you-please-come-look-and-help-me-figure-out-what’s-happening-so-I-don’t-sound-like-a-moron-when-I-talk-to-him-plea. Which he did, because he is fantastic. By the time we had traced lines together and talked things through, both my panic and the spray was lessening but I was turning blue. Happily, that same fantastic neighbor also has a fantastic shower.

I left a message with the plumber (who doesn’t work weekends and was watching the Packer game anyway) and ran back outside through the snow, hat-less, jacket-less with a soggy towel (because I was still a moron) and a lot of soap to the hot shower. After using a significant amount of soap and putting on all clean clothes I felt better… but colder because even fantastic showers can make you cold when you’re in an apple barn.

Then it got worse.  I still had to run back through the snow to the house, (still hat-less, still jacket-less because of the moron thing), where I found that in all the excitement of the morning the fire had died and the house was only about 63 degrees. A temperature that is in no way warm enough when you are soggy and frozen to the bone. But, duty called, I took my goosebumps down to the basement to check and was happy to see that the geyser had wore itself out. Back upstairs I, finally, put on a hat, built a fire and Ivy who had been happily building through the whole escapade brought me more Legos to see.

And then we made the best plan of the day; a late lunch at Culvers and an afternoon of Lego building. By the end of the day we still didn’t have running water and couldn’t flush a toilet but we did have a zoo, complete with dolphin tank and wizard couple.