I brought my father to physical therapy this morning, then took him out to lunch afterwards. I drove back home around 2 pm. When I walked in the front door, my cat immediately began meowing to be fed, and when I walked into the kitchen, there was a funny noise coming from the basement that sounded a little different.

Wondering if either my central air or my new heat pump hot water heater was malfunctioning, I went into the basement to find about half the basement floor covered in water and then, shockingly, I saw that the cause of the sound was a burst pipe where water was gushing out.

I was able to stop it by turning off the water for the whole house. There was plenty of water on the floor, but judging from the amount of water, it seemed that it had only been gushing out for 5 or 10 minutes. That's why I think if I had arrived even 20 minutes later, I would have had a REAL mess on my hands. I can't imagine what I would have found if I had been away for a much longer time period. This is the kind of thing you just can't prepare for; it just randomly happens.

I started calling plumbers but all I was getting was answering machines. Since I had no water in the house now, I didn't want to wait around for someone to call me back, so I kept calling til I found one right up the road that I have never used. He said he could come over in a half-hour.

I found the cap that had burst off the main water line on the basement floor and showed him. He told me it was quite old because it was made of iron, and nowadays they are made of brass, and said that it was the wrong type to have been used on my water line. It was an easy fix for him. Since he was there, I showed him some copper piping that was pretty badly corroded and he said since the burst pipe didn't take up the full hour, he could fix the copper corroded pipes for just an additional $38 (materials), so I had him take care of that too. A good thing to do since I'm planning on selling the house now. All told, I felt kind of fortunate to have  only had to shell out $213 for this unexpected emergency.

While he was here, the other plumbers I had called started calling back, and the wife of one of them texted to tell me that her husband and assistant were on their way, but I was able to tell her I already had someone here. At least now I know these plumbers do respond fairly quickly to emergency situations.

In my town, if you ask someone whose a good plumber to call, 85% of the time you get 1 of 2 plumbers who are mentioned again and again. It's like they have a lock on the town. There are plenty of other plumbers, but they are recommended less. As a result, these top 2 plumbers charge a premium, it seems. I have used them both; they were both competent, but I had issues with both of them, aside from price.

So I was happy with the plumber who came here today and will call him first should I have a need moving forward.

I'm running my dehumidifier down in the basement now to dry it out. All the water also flowed into my adjacent garage, and for the first time I used a wet vac I had bought for just this kind of emergency. So I got most of the surface water sucked up and now it's just wet concrete. I had a 5 x 7 cheap indoor/outdoor rug in front of the washer and dryer which I guess I'm going to have to toss since with this humid weather it's not going to dry out anytime soon and will probably get moldy. There's also an old draft dodger my mother had made for me that got soaked as it was in front of the basement door, so guess I'll toss that too.

You think your life is orderly and you're on top of everything; it's disconcerting to realize life will always throw you curve balls and that you can't organize every possible curve ball away.