(Like it nearly, sorta, kinda, almost never even happened.)
~-~-~-~-~-~

I knew something was wrong when I saw water on the kitchen floor.

I’m quick like that.

WEDNESDAY :: ~6.30p

I was working from home, wrapping up another fulfilling day of writing enough software to ensure that my little charge of corporate Americans could keep making their boat payments.

I got up, to change the music and to restock the ice chilling my Coke Zero, and saw the water. Lightning-like thinker that I am, I sensed a problem.

Let’s cut to the chase: the pipe feeding my bathroom faucet had popped loose. By the time I visited the crime scene, the floor was nearly an inch under water. My “master” bathroom had become a candidate for a 1940s water ballet, assuming the stars were Danny DeVito and Barbara Mikulski. And the rest of the impatient water had soaked its way through my carpeted bedroom, found that boring, and decided to tour the kitchen.

I won’t psychically scar you by describing the nauseating sound a waterlogged bedroom carpet makes under bare feet.

WEDNESDAY :: ~6.32p

Initially, I just stood there, an idiot in the water, like some lobotomized cypress knee. I just stood there, staring at the standing inch of uninvited water in my bathroom. Finally, it occurred to me that I own towels.

I’m quick like that.

WEDNESDAY :: ~8.00p

Around 8:00p, I had emptied the cement pond into the tub … towel by towel by hand-wrung towel. “Well done,” I thought. “Well done.”

Then I remembered the carpet in the bedroom.

WEDNESDAY :: ~8.02p

Every sea-lab footprint across my Fortress of Solitude, from the bathroom doorway to the kitchen doorway, was a blurry Sasquatch wet-cast. As a test, I planted a foot and watched…watched as water pooled, around my foot, from in and under the bedroom carpet.

And I have to say, at the risk of causing a metaphor collision, that’s when it sank in:

This event is bigger than me.

I called the insurance.

WEDNESDAY :: ~8.30p

I fully expected to get an after-hours recording, at which point I would do what any man would do: entertain a few semi-violent thoughts about the insurance agent, quietly insult his genetic heritage and choice of social partners, and then head for the spare bedroom for tossage and turnage.

But the insurance answered the phone. An actual human being answered the phone.

Next, I expected the standard full-bore Insurance Company denial dance:

• The number you have dialed is not a valid integer
• I’m sorry, Mr. Valued Client, but your alleged flood damage occurred with six statute miles of a non-binding vernal equinox, and sadly that’s not covered under your Submariner Druid Exclusion Rider, Section Five-Oh-Five-Zed.
• Que?

But no. The insurance said they’d take care of everything.

Things were looking up at Cement Pond Central.

WEDNESDAY :: ~8.40p

Not only did I make contact with the insurance, but they contacted a disaster recovery company – I won’t mention them by name, but it rhymes with Swerve-Crow – and I was promised a suck-up team (no the other suck-up) within the hour.

WEDNESDAY :: ~within the hour

As it turns out, Swerve-Crow has some very loud machines. But I’m getting ahead of myself. That part wouldn’t happen till around midnight.

Before I became acquainted with the high-decibel industrial fans and two-story humidifiers, Swerve-Crow first carted in a cadre of green machines with long blue hoses. And those mastodon-trunked machines sucked on my bedroom carpet like IRS agents trying to get pocket money for their next Line Dancing & Drive-Thru Colonoscopy seminar.

The head Swerve-Crow was amazingly efficient. He supervised the drying stage, organized the fan placements, took copious notes and made twenty-seven million measurements of my home, using some kind of tape measure that seemed to actually levitate.

THURSDAY :: ~12.49a

Swerve-Crow and their aqua-suckers had done all they could do. They had parted my Bed Sea, and now it was time for the aforementioned very loud machines.. Nine fans, on loan from Dante’s Seventh Level Gaping Maw Wind Tunnel Inc., and two anal-retentive dehumidifiers that could extract moisture from a mummy’s navel.

I live two miles from the airport. When Swerve-Crow powered up this Army of Baskervilles, the runway lights dimmed.

And then it began. A loud, endless, endless thrumming. My house sounded like the carney side of a county fair.

And Team Swerve-Crow departed.
THURSDAY :: ~1.00a

But there’s more adventure, more discovery. Over my years of home ownership, I’d been vaguely aware of an untraveled portion of my house known to normal people as the “guest bedroom.” I remember the realtor had gone on about it while showing me the house. At the time, I hadn’t paid much attention…I was busy calculating the distance from my future fridge to my future couch.

So, tonight – for the first time in my life – I’m sleeping in my guest bedroom. What’s protocol? Should I turn down my quilt and leave a pillow chocolate? Should I expect breakfast, or provide breakfast? Or is this what my Jamaican friend used to call “Breakfast Jump Up” — where you jump up and you make you own breakfast, you lazy ball head.

DAY TWO :: ~3.30p

Thinking ahead, I called a plumber, so he could repair the sink next week.

Somebody from the insurance came by; possibly he was the Claim Agent, or the Adjustor, or the Mitigator, or the Spanish Inquisition. Heck, for all I know, he was that sex offender who, according to the Official Sex Offender Registry, lives somewhere near me under a red dot. All I know is he had a business card and a business clipboard. And, of course, a gravity-defying tape measure. He explained many technical and legal things, though not to me, took copious notes, and … measured … again.

Then he gave me a brief idea of what to expect over the next days, and weeks, although it could take longer, so plan for that, and before he could complete that sentence, I hit him with the clipboard.

I called the plumber back to cancel.  Next week, there won’t even be a sink to fix yet.

NIGHT TWO :: ~8.00p

These fans are starting to get on my nerves.

The size of the Disruption Factor is beginning to kick in, too. For example, my kitchen is half-gutted. That includes linoleum, sub-flooring, and counter units that used to be attached to the walls.

For sups, I wanted to heat up a nice bowl of soup. I had to go out to the garage to get a pot. And a spoon.

And the soup.

DAY THREE :: ~2.30p

I left all the fans running and went to work, then spent the morning driving back home to make sure my house hadn’t desiccated like some starved spider.

As scheduled, an optimistic, several-days-early-at-least contractor came by and … measured. These disaster people need to work on their communication skills.

NIGHT THREE :: ~8.00p

Okay, as the bold headline already said, this is Night Three of playing host to a nonet of Swerve-Crow industrial fans. Mighty fine workers they are, these fans, but not much in the way of stimulating conversation. Just that one word is about it. That one looooooong word, over, and over, and over, and over again.

It was the sound one of Tolkien’s Ents might make saying ‘aah’ for a Fangorn dentist.

That one, loud, continuous, somnolent, torpid word.

That. Loud. Endless. One-tone. Deafening. Dirge.

If you see me in the news, picking off coeds from a college bell tower with a Second Amendment-protected pop tart, you’ll know why.

NIGHT FOUR :: ~11.59p

I hate them. These evil, foul-mouthed, one-note, shrieking Swerve-Crow fans. I hate them.

I have tickets to the Symphony, but I don’t even want them anymore. Not tonight. The program is Wagner, and I don’t need to drive into town to hear about the Valkyrie … I’m living with the Valkyrie.

I’m ready to do something dark, violent, and heartless, like go find a bar that’s having Open Mike Night, wait for the singer to begin, then leap to my feet and start screaming, “Derivative! That’s so derivative!”

You know – it just occurred to me – I don’t have to stay here in this jump up exurban Twister sound stage. I give up. I’m getting a hotel room.

Nearly a hundred moor-hound howling hours it took me, to figure that out.

I’m quick like that.