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The Big Apple and jackhammers in my living room

You don't often see that stuff together, do you? If you're lucky, you never will. See, when in NY, a person sees and hears jackhammers. They're everywhere. Along with trash trucks abusing dumpsters in the wee hours.

But jackhammers should NEVER be found in one's living room. Particularly when they're there because a hot water pipe decided to leak. In the middle of the evening. On Friday night. After a looooooooooong day of preparing the house for the hall bath remodel.

Hubby and I were watching Up in the Air on Friday night, when all of  a sudden, during a quiet moment in the movie, we heard a sound. Like someone had left the water on outside. But nobody had. Or inside either.

There's no terror like that struck by the prospect of yet another plumbing crisis. Our trauma of December still lingers in spite of our attempting to will it away, so when we heard that plumbing sound, we both panicked a bit.

Which is no way to spend a Friday night.

So we turned off the water to the house (after determining that the little triangle thing on the meter was spinning...which wasn't good since every single thing was off in the house!)

It's not like we were living in luxury to begin with. We'd already moved Daughter's stuff into our bathroom in prep for the remodel in hers. We were already operating down a bathroom. We were hunkering, ready for the demolition/rebirth of the hall bath.

Fortunately (we're told), the scenario we lived was the best possible of all options. It could have been a lot worse and much more invasive for our house and pocketbook.

That said, our option (not really an option if you're compelled to do it, right???) involved cutting through some sheet rock (under our vanity), pulling back carpet in the living room, identifying the suspected area of the leak, then JACKHAMMERING out a big square of our slab, which then revealed the pipe that had chosen that moment to leak hot water under the house....

By Saturday afternoon the work was done. The pipe was fixed. Daughter's and my toes looked really nice (we opted to head out after the jackhammering had caused a family photo above the fireplace to fall and shatter, taking a piece of her beautiful ceramic work with it and after which I ended up breaking down...apparently I'd reached my limit), the concrete was setting, and all looked promising for the dinner party we were hosting for Daughter's 18th birthday on Sunday.

Somehow, it all came together. Ok, we pulled it together. All of it. And she had a lovely dinner, good party, and celebration with ten friends of the great big event that marks her entrance to adulthood. She can now vote, join the Army (though we're discouraging this particular course), sign a contract and be held to it, etc.

But there's still curfew. That's not going away.

After all, when would we EVER sleep if she was allowed to wander freely (which, thankfully, she is not inclined to do)?

And NY? It was awesome. The PR visit went well. The conference went well. Son is getting ready to graduate and is figuring out what the year between undergrad and grad school will look like.

It was cold, though. So I mostly wore the comfy warm shoes. But I did get to wear my cute flats and my cute pumps a couple of times, so that turned out ok.

My favorite part of NY? Coming home to NM where it's quiet, the air is clean and fresh, and there are NO trash trucks wrestling with dumpsters at 3 a.m. or hotel 'neighbors' deciding REO Speedwagon is just the ticket for a little early morning (330 a.m.) jamming.

I'm just sayin'.

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