The Leak

Pololo has begun a “boot camp” class to prepare him to take the GMAT exam. Normally this boot camp takes place over 3 months…Pololo is doing it in 3 weeks. The professor told him he’s crazy, it’s not possible, but eventually agreed to do it. The first thing the professor did was take away Pololo’s social life of course.

That gives you the background for my story, which took place last Saturday. Pololo was in class for 3 hours that morning, then we were going to go out to lunch and then he would go back to studying for the rest of the day. I was proud of myself for being productive. I cleaned the entire apartment, sorted through a stack of brochures for my own MBA research, and even went to the gym.

I had just enough time left before lunch to gather up all of the bottles we stash under the sink (we take them to the grocery store to recycle. It must be quite annoying for Pololo who has never recycled in his life, but he’s a good sport about it).

Of course I’m in a hurry because I’m still in my sweats and am a mess from cleaning. As I’m rushing to pull out the bottles one catches on the water line and…you guessed it…the water hose starts spraying water all over the kitchen!

With a string of cursing in Spanish and English that I imagine would have been quite amusing to an onlooker, I hurried to put a pan under largest of the leaks and grab some towels from the bathroom. But this temporary fix was obviously not going to last because by the time I grab the towels the pan was already full!

So there I was, on my knees and dripping wet, and realizing that there is nobody I can call to help. Pololo was stressed out and in his class, so I was going to have to find a way to not flood our downstairs-neighbor’s apartment. Humph, well fine then! I found where to turn off the water, or rather slow it down to a drip, drip, just as Pololo called. “Where do you want to meet for lunch?” he says. Ummmmmm…. “Actually,” I respond, “I’d prefer it if you came home first and we go together,” in my sweetest voice. That was shortly followed by some more cursing as I looked around at the mess.

By the time he got back I had managed to tighten the hose to stop the leak and turn the water back on with no spraying water. So all he had to do was chuckle sight of me dripping wet with towels all over the kitchen, and laugh at the mental pictures as I told the story.

I’m happy to report that my fix has held since then, no more leaks all week.

The only thing that was missing for this to be a true sit-com moment is that I did not hit my head on the under-side of the sink. Maybe next time…