The Leak That Fixes Itself, or The Strange Nature-Defying Powers of the Poderosa

Hello, lovelies. Your humble blogger here, doing something of a remote. I'm at work.

Now, let's get a couple of things straight. First of all, I'm not blogging at work through Blogger. I'm not quite that brave. I'm writing all this down to save on a disc and load into Blogger when I get home.

Also, as I'm writing this at work, I know that I have no business being at work. I'm still sick, I'm still running a fever, joints are still achy, throat is still sore, and I feel like someone had at me with a ball peen hammer. However, the boss is out this afternoon, so I don't have much of a choice. I'll live, though. I'm drinking chicken bullion.

Well, I think I'll live.

I got the final word today in the whole Poderosa Water Debacle. This has been going on for some three months now. My water usage - and therefore water bill - quadrupled in November. Overnight. Well, overmonth, but it went from small to large very quickly. And I've been working on finding out what's going on ever since, but only in a fairly half-assed way, which is why I've paid four times more than I should for water the past three months.

It all started with a call to Barbara at the Water Office. I've spoken to Barbara so much lately I feel like I should be inviting her over for Sunday dinner. She did confirm that, yes, my, my, my, my water bill had risen dramatically, and said she'd send someone out to re-read the meter. My meter has been read more times than the Bible, by the way. Every time I'd call back for the results, Barbara would tell me that, yes indeed, the meter was running when I wasn't at home, which meant that water was running when I wasn't at home. But she'd always conclude with the same thing. "But in this reading, your water usage is down almost two thousand gallons, which leads me to believe it's not a leak. Because, you know, a leak won't fix itself."

A leak won't fix itself. I kept telling myself that titillating tidbit of hope.

In one of those leak not fixing itself phone calls, Barbara gave me a suggestion. I'd told her previously that my problem couldn't be a running toilet (you'd better go catch it!), because I'd just replaced my toilet innards. She said, ah, though, you can have a leaky toilet when you're sure it's an impossibility, and she told me all about the Food Coloring Test. For the uninitiated, the Food Coloring Test is a test wherein you take some food coloring, drip a few drops into your toilet tank, wait 30 minutes, and if you have color in your bowl - and here's the kicker, this is important - and that color's the same color as the food coloring you dripped into the tank, then you have what is known as a leaky toilet. (If you have color in your bowl that's not the same color as what you dripped in your tank, well, frankly, I don't know if there's any help for you.)

And here's the part of the story where I became half-assed about the whole thing. I probably flutzed around six weeks before I ever did the Food Coloring Test. I was always busy. Always going somewhere. It's odd how one can't make time in one's busy schedule to drip a drop into one's toilet tank. It was always somewhere in the back of my head, and would come to the front of my head when I had to pay a $58 water bill instead of a $13 one, but then it would amble back in my head and lie down.

But this past $58, which was last week, I decided I needed to get off my procrastinating ass and drip some drops into my toilet tank. I did. I used blue. And my toilet - and therefore my talents at toilet-innard-installing - passed the Food Coloring Test with flying colors. There wasn't a hint of blue in my bowl until I flushed, and when I did it was so pretty it almost made me wish I used TidyBowl, although I suspect I'd have cross words with that man in the boat in short order.

So Monday I called Barbara back, and once again she said she'd have someone read the meter, and once again it was lower than it had been but still over 6000 gallons more than it should be, and once again she said, "A leak won't fix itself." And she scheduled a meter reading with me there, with the water main turned off, for 8:00 this morning.

I came home from work yesterday, and now, it's quite odd because when I left work yesterday I didn't feel the least bit ill, but I left work, stopped by the grocery, unloaded groceries into my kitchen, went to the side of the house to make sure I knew where the water main cutoff was, and went back inside. Within 20 minutes I was playing Text Twist and falling asleep, to the point where I finally let my head drop to the keyboard and began snoozing, mouse in hand. I woke up, did a few yoga poses (which is a whole new story I've yet to enlighten you with), and went to wash my face and take out my contact lenses. It was at that point when I realized, "You know, I just don't feel right," and decided to take my temperature, and got more than a little shock when I saw it was over 99, and my normal temperature runs about 97.

And so the rest of the night was a complete haze of aches, pains, and chills, with the thermometer rising as high as 101 and as low as 99.8. I'm hovering today in the mid-99s, thanks for asking.

Anyway, this morning at about 8:15 the Town Water People came and turned off my water and opened up the meter and played with crowbars and frolicked around in my yard for awhile, then came back to the door to tell me, "When the main's off, the meter's off. When the main's on, the meter's on. You have a leak either in your yard or under your house. Bye!"

"No!" I wanted to scream. "No! A leak won't fix itself!" But I didn't, and in fact, I didn't quite get the whole thing. Seems to me that if your meter was running when the water was off, that's when you'd have a problem. But I let it go, mainly because I felt like absolute shit and had to be at work within the hour. When I got to work? Phone call to Barbara.

"Well, sounds like you do have a leak," she said, and I really wanted to call her on the whole leak fixing itself and leading me down the primrose path, but frankly, at that point I was losing the will to live. She explained to me that "no water, no meter - water, meter" was a bad thing because it meant if the water main was on and the meter was running - with no water running in the house - that meant water was coursing through your pipes that shouldn't be. And so Barbara suggested I call a plumber, and if I'd had about an inch more gumption and a degree less fever I might have said, "Why do I need a plumber? Apparently I have a leak that's fixing itself!" But that wouldn't have been fair because even though she did lead me down the primrose path, Barbara was a hell of a nice lady and I'm way too kind (read: chickenshit) to say anything like that anyway.

So now it's on to my plumber, who hangs upside down like a bat 23 hours of the day, and who returns phone messages when the blood rushes back out of his head and he's not tooling around town in his truck drinking coffee. I don't know when I'll hear from him, and don't know what I'll find out when he comes. In the meantime I think I'll try out the other hues of food coloring in my toilet tank. I really got to thinking one night, if I could drip different colored drops in the right places and flush, I could have a toilet rainbow.

And that was before the fever struck.

Oh, how I do love the Poderosa so very much.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Acrowinners, we have acrowinners. Many entries, you've warmed the cockles of my heart. So, what's your advice to Britney Spears?
- Honorable Mention goes to Duke, with his, "Party down until Neurons explode." (Personally, I like that someone's advice is to just go out in a blaze of glory.)
- Runner-Up goes to Kellie with an ie, with her, "Perhaps, Dear, Underwear. Nifty Experiment!"
- And this week's winner goes to the dishy Michelle, with her, "Protect down under: no exposing!"
- Thanks to all who played - you've all done very well!