How cold is it?

Well, we woke up this morning and when Kevin went to wash his hands, our faucet sputted and then…nothing. Over night, our pipes had frozen. Now, that’s cold!

And, in the case of any home emergency, I did what any rational person would do.

I called my dad.

Now, my dad is the ultimate repository of fix it knowledge. Cars, homes, electronic equipment, my dad has some idea of how to tinker with it. I think this is because of two personality traits.

First, my dad is an engineer. This profession requires an inquisitive mind and a love of tinkering. So if something breaks, Elmo isn’t at all shy about taking it apart and trying to figure out what is wrong.

Second, my dad is cheap. He’d rather spend 20 hours cursing and banging on something then actually pay someone who knows what they are doing to come in, charge him for an hour of work, and fix it. I have no memories from childhood of a plumber or electrition coming to our home. Our car was never “in the shop”. No, my memories consist of my dad yelling obscenities as he cut into the dry wall to get to a pipe that had frozen and busted, car parts strewn around the garage with the car itself up and a jack, or my dad sitting with his voltmeter trying to figure out which as the live wire.

So when something goes wrong in my house or with my car, I always call Elmo. Sure enough, he had a plan of action for my current quandry that involved boiling water in pots and pouring said water over the pipe coming into our house outside. After only one pot, we had running water again.

Of course, it has since re-frozen so Kevin has made a Home Depot trip and is in the process of trying to insulate the pipe.

C-O-L-D. All we need now is the snow. And a fire. Yeah, a nice roaring fire!