It's among a father's worst nightmares; being woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of glass breaking downstairs. Gina and I leap out of bed, she rushes to the girls rooms to make sure they're still safe and sound, I bound to the top of the stairs in protector mode. Our 90 pound guard dog remains fast asleep on his extra fluffy dog bed. Gina joins me and confirms all girls are accounted for and together we peer into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs.
"Hello," Gina calls out. I'm not sure what we expected. As if a robber is going to merrily respond with "good evening folks, just here for the flat screen and I'll be on my way."
There was no response so Gina gently nudged me and I began a stealthy decent towards the living room. It's during this moment that I realize I"m solely in my underwear and now I'm curious who would feel more awkward, me or the intruder. I imagine we'd both be caught of guard for a moment. Me by the sight of an actual stranger in my house, them by some very worn out Champion line boxer briefs that probably should have been retired long ago.
By the second half of the staircase (you move extremely slow in a situation like this, almost hoping they have taken the valuables and vacated by the time you get to them) and that's when I hear it. The heavy, labored breathing. ... of our cat with a deviated septum. Now trepidation has been replaced by frustration as of course it's that damn cat - keep in mind both dogs (including that 90 pound guard dog) are still fast asleep upstairs. She had knocked a large drinking glass off the center of the kitchen island and it's shattered across the floor downstairs. So now Gina and I are on our hands and knees trying desperately to find every last shard before the sun comes up and little girls come bounding downstairs in bare feet.
We finally get it all and begin our retreat back upstairs. I'm cursing "my wife's cat" because she has always had this habit of trying to drink out of human glasses so this isn't the first "oop's" she's had. Gina says something along the lines of "wouldn't you feel terrible if she was out of water?" I shrug that off and mutter something even I couldn't understand in response; it is 3AM after all. And then it hits me: it's been 100+ the last week. She's got one of those giant auto water bowls but I can't remember the last time I filled the reservoir or the last time I even checked it. So as I pass by I peak into the laundry room and sure enough, it's bone dry. Damnit! Now I DO fee bad. ... a little; it's my wife's cat after all.
So I take the reservoir out and head to the bathroom. It's so big that the only way you can fill it aside from a hose is in the bathtub. I top off the few gallons worth that it holds and as I'm putting the base on I hear a very soft "pop". But I shrug it off and flip the apparatus back over. Now the way this thing works is the reservoir sits above the drinking dish. Because it's airtight it allows the water in storage to sit above the dish, waiting to dispense down below without spilling all over the place. It's the same effect that happens when you fill a cup with water in a lake, and slowly raise it up above the surface. The water in the cup is able to remain above the surface with out dropping down below.
Well, turns out that "pop" was a small crack in the top of the plastic reservoir, so as I begin walking back towards the laundry room with this multiple gallon water unit, the laws of physics kick in and air coming in the crack pushes the water in the reservoir down and I've now got a full on flood cascading over me and the carpet in our hallway as I desperately try to run back towards the bathroom and the tub.
All of this on my Friday night, the night I'm supposed to get to sleep in because I don't have to get up at 4:30 on Saturdays. But I should look at the positives, after all it's not a total loss. The guard dog was still able to get a solid 8 hours.
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