I flipped out

I can tell when I'm stressed, because the little stuff I can normally deal with gets to me.

I got home from the reception a bit after 5 pm, also had to make a stop for more butter and more jam for another batch of cookies. (Three funerals - two with receptions, one with just a family dinner, in one week). And the fruit punch for the kids' halloween part tonight.

Late in the evening - maybe around 8:30 - I flushed the toilet.

And then it didn't fill back up. And I couldn't hear water running. So I took the lid off and looked at the "guts" in the tank, jiggled the thing that replaces the old float in the newer "guts." Nothing. Turned the shut-off valve to off, turned it back on. Nothing.

I figured my toilet had broken. And I couldn't see how. That was what really got to me, I think - while I am not a plumbing *genius*, I have replaced the guts of a toilet and I understand the basic workings of one. And I couldn't see anything clearly wrong. I thought maybe the line to the toilet (that little flexible metal pipe) was blocked (though in retrospect, even that would have been an simple enough fix).

I just stood there for a moment, and something snapped. The couple of nights of doing nothing all night but grade, the day of driving a fifteen passenger van out on back country roads not once but twice, dealing with three deaths of people I knew, worrying about getting my OAS presentation done and my soil invertebrate samples sorted and the exam I give next week graded and the next few chapters of PI done, and and and and.

I just flipped out. Flipped out at the toilet.

"NOOOOOO!" I shouted at it. "NO YOU CANNOT BREAK NOW!! I CAN'T afford the time to get a plumber out on Monday - I need ALL MONDAY AFTERNOON TO WORK*! And I can't afford a new toilet right now! NO NO NO NO NO NO I CANNOT COPE WITH THIS!" And I stomped around more, and yelled more.

(*And I also feel a bit guilty, even if I should not, about begging off on helping either Families Feeding Families - it's our turn right now - or at the reception for Monday's funeral)

And then I thought: could there be a broken pipe under the house. Oh yeah, great, that would be JUST what I needed - to have to get a plumber out for an emergency call on a Saturday night (or turn the water off from the street - which I didn't think of at that moment - and just exist again in a house with no water).

I turned on the sink tap - water came out, but (I didn't notice so much at the time) slowly. So I decided to grab one of my buckets from my PREVIOUS experiment in living without water and fill the tank with it, so I could at least flush when I next needed to. Put the bucket in the tub. Tried turning on the tap.

Almost no water came out. Then the penny dropped.

So I called the non-emergency police number (what you're supposed to call with city water issues after hours) and asked the woman who answered: "Has anyone else reported low water pressure in town?"

And she laughed ruefully and said, "Have they ever."

Apparently, a main broke somewhere - she said crews were out searching for the problem and would fix it, but that "it might take some time." I told her I was just relieved to learn my toilet wasn't broken.

It must have been quite a large break, or a break at a major point, because people from all over town were talking about it in church this morning. (Water pressure has since been restored, and nothing here is broken, after all.)

But yeah: I think I've got too much on my plate when I'm screaming a my toilet a 9 pm on a Saturday.