The plumber has just left. Again.

Yes! Turns out that he wasn't able to fix everything yesterday, although he did leave us a trickle of water sufficient for the brushing of teeth and the flushing of toilets (providing you didn't mind waiting a long, long, long time for the tank to fill up so you could do it again. (Which certainly beats no flushing altogether. Trust me.))

On the other hand, and much to my amazement, he did clean up all the drywall and cement and so forth produced by knocking a hole in the wall. And the hole wasn't terribly excessive, either-- just enough to expose the relevant pipes and joints. Even better is the fact that said pipes are in the pantry, so they're not visible to the average passerby.

The downside is that a great deal of the stuff I have stuffed into my pantry had to come out, so it looked like moving day in the kitchen. I hate moving days. Not only that, if you wanted to get out a fork, you had to move the vacuum cleaner. If you wanted to get some other type of utensil, you had to move the garbage can. If you wanted to retrieve a saucepan or the like, you had to move a couple of large boxes, and then move even more of them to open the oven or the lid to the stove.

Unless you could nuke it, nothing got cooked last night.

If you wanted to put something into the dishwasher (necessary, especially given that a great deal of counter space was given over to boxes), things were a bit more complicated. You could gather up and hold on to a number of mop handles, duster handles, dust-mop handles and the handles to other random cleaning implements with one hand, using the other to open the door and balance it on your thigh, then lean in and try to find a space for your tea cup or whatever. At which point you would lose control of some handle or another and it would crash to the floor. Alternatively, you could move the pile of cleaning implements and use both hands to load the diswasher, at which point the whole lot of them would go crashing down to the floor, with at least one managing to hit a tender part of your anatomy on the way. The choice, as they say, is yours.

The only one who was happy about the situation was Calliope. Calliope likes piles of boxes, and the bigger the better.

"Oooh! I'm so comfy! And don't knock over
those mops again or you'll wake me up!

In fact, Calliope likes those boxes so much that she slept there, instead of curling up with us, in the bedroom with the nice electric heater in it.

The plumber said he'd be back in the morning with a new valve for the water heater, which was still emitting horrid and ear piercing screeches-- hence the lack of hot water and the low, low water pressure. And, true to his word, he did come back shortly before lunchtime. He pounded things, and dropped pieces of metal on the tile floor, and talked on his phone, and did many other plumberly things.

Then he left again. Seems he needed another valve.

But wait! Miracle of miracles, he came back again, and now we've got water.

Allegedly, we've even got HOT water, once the boiler gets through heating it up. Which is a good thing, since neither of us has showered yet today, and Elvis didn't manage to shower yesterday, either. And he, if you recall, was the one with the high fever, although he didn't have one at all today, which is also good.

In fact, I do believe I'll take a shower right now. And then I can run the dishwasher. And after that, there's a pile of wet towels from yesterday that need washing. Looks like my evening is all planned out. What joy!

But first things first-- I'm going to have to put away all those boxes, cleaning implements and other random stuff, and clean my kitchen.

Poor Calliope will be so disappointed. She'll get over it though.

She always does.