Water, water, everywhere....

Dropped Mr. Fix-it at the airport and before he could get through customs, I was back at the house ready to get some things done, i.e. throw away some crap while he wasn't looking.

I put on a load of clothes and got busy tossing stuff. I buzz back into the kitchen to grab a diet Coke and find an inch of water! There was water all the way to the front door. The man still hasn't gotten off the ground and here I stand wondering where the crap all this water came from. I mean the fact that it came from the washer was pretty obvious, but how did it get out of the washer?

It's about this time that I realized that the ice maker was off. I love that ice machine! Civilized life in the Caribbean requires ice! I caught the cord and followed it down to the power strip sitting underwater on the floor. Yep, it's going to be a long week without Mr. Fix-it.

I start to formulate a plan. I figure that I can drag the wet dripping clothes out of the washer and throw them in the pool to rinse them, then hang them on the furniture to dry. Most of the clothes are Mr. Fix-it's so I have a week to get them dry, but the ice maker. Now that's a problem and it has to be solved and solved fast!

First things first, forget the water, forget the clothes, see if the ice maker still works! Everyone in the Caribbean has several of those big heavy duty orange extension cords, so I went and got one of mine, a nice long one with a three prong plug on it. I checked the electric panel and saw that there was a breaker thrown and since I was standing in an inch of water I didn't try to reset it. Instead I dried off the plug to the ice maker plugged it into the cord and ran the cord into the living room and plugged it in. Nothing arched or popped, so far so good. I went back into the kitchen and holding my breath, pushed the button on the ice maker. I got light! I hang the cord carefully on the door knob, across the bar, over the bar stool and drape it over a chair in the dining room to keep it up out of the way and out of the water.

With things looking up, I prop open the front door and the door out to the pool and grab the broom. Now there is a floor drain right in front of the washer but since it's not lower than the rest of the floor, like a drain should be, it is pretty close to useless. About the only thing that it does well is to dry out so that sewer gas can leak back up into the kitchen, which is always a real pleasure. Nothing like smelling stink in the kitchen!


So...I bypass the drain and start sweeping the water out the doors. There is a lot of water. I finally start to make a little progress and with the ice maker's little green light smiling at me, life is looking a lot better, who cares about wet clothes.

It's about this time that I see what I think is a bag of dog food sitting on the pantry floor. I grab it thinking that dog food bags are nice & think and I might have gotten to it before the water soaked through. Wrong! I picked it up, the bottom falls out and I realize that it is cat litter, which doesn't come in a nice strong bag. I just stand there and watch as the big pile of cat litter turns into a big gunky pile of cat litter. That was it. I just leaned the broom against the wall grabbed a beer instead of the diet Coke I originally came into the kitchen for, turned the ceiling fan on high and walked out.

With the ice machine running, time was my friend when it came to the rest of the mess. Thank God for tile floors!