Last night, having searched for most of the afternoon for the shut-off valve to the unisex bathroom on the first floor of the PBC&R, I threw caution to the wind and flipped the house shut-off main valve and started to change out the fill valve. When I reached underneath the tank to work with the locknut, the old, old pipe coming out of the floor, broke off.

Are you at this paragraph? It took me a while to get here. That sentence about the breaking triggered a recurrence of the stunned moment of realization I faced last night. I just can’t relive this moment by moment. My head down, I announced to lingering patrons what had happened and I called a plumber. Summer chimed in with “Good job, Grandma! How will my toad get water?” and then Sydney barked when the guy came.

I sat on a little step stool in the kitchen with Sydney beside me while he worked, sawing through ancient pipe and all that. Quentin called and I answered and he said, “Are you all right, Mom?” I told him what was going on and then had to hang up abruptly to answer plumbing questions.

Der Bingle called almost immediately after and I just said I’d call him back in a few minutes.  The plumber left shortly thereafter and I did call back . . . and told him. Then I called Quentin and got him up to date. He asked me if  this one of the things that we don’t tell anyone? That used to be just Grandma – Now, you know, we don’t need to mention this to Grandma – but, now, sometimes includes (cough, cough) his dad, Der Bingle. I told him it was okay, that I had already fessed up.

Oh, dear, do you suppose Der Bingle might wonder if there are other things he hasn’t been told? Well, no, no. Uh, Quentin and I have just had a few dry runs of being quiet about AmeliaJake antics. Yes, yes, that’s it: dry runs.

Anyway, the plumber did a quick fix for me and didn’t charge much at all, relatively speaking.