Today started like many others — wake up, coffee, et cetera. While I was in the middle of getting myself something to eat, Martha — who was getting ready to shower — yelled from the bedroom, "See if you can get any hot water out of the sink." Uh-oh.
So, I turned the hot water on and waited. Nothing, just regular unheated water. Damn. Off to the downstairs, muttering, "It's always goddamn something," and hoping for something relatively simple like a pilot light needing to be relit. And then I saw the wood frame on the closet downstairs. The wood was darkened up to a height of about nine inches. And, I realized the bottom of my foot was wet.
Again: Uh-oh.
Water was dripping out from the bottom of the water heater at a pretty rapid clip, and pretty much the whole downstairs was soaked. It still is, in fact, and probably will be for a few days. The little dehumidifier we got several years ago isn't going to do much for this, and I suspect we'll have to break out some bigger guns. As for the water heater, that was a quick call to my favorite plumbers, Jerry Hilbert Plumbing. Those guys are awesome, quick, and reliable... I simply can't say enough good things about them. They decided the water heater needed to be replaced (which sounds right to me — it's about ten years old) and they are currently in the process of getting that done.
Back in our renting days, if something like this had happened, it would be a call to the landlord. Landlord would then work on the repairs or farm it out to someone else. And today — well, it's still a phone call, but it's also something I'll have to pay for later instead of being included in my monthly "I'm going to live here" payment. And I simply do not fuck with plumbing if I don't have to, so fixing it myself is out of the question regardless.
I guess sometimes — especially times like this — I wonder what I'm paying for, exactly, in that "I'm going to live here" payment (more commonly known as a mortgage payment instead of rent). Technically I don't really "own" anything here — the bank holds the paperwork. I pay for the privilege of living in a place where getting things fixed is my responsibility, and that means either more work on my part or paying someone else to do it. The breakage is inevitable, I learned that a long time ago — it's a fundamental law of the universe.
I know it's better to own instead of rent, or at least have been conditioned to believe that — but right now, I really wonder if that's true.