Just as it started to seem like we’d never find a house, it all fell together alarmingly quickly. A week after seeing the ad on craigslist, we were hauling a bed up a narrow flight of stairs and arguing about where to put the stereo speakers.

The only frame of reference I really have for cohabitation is what I’ve seen in romantic comedies, and so far Trenton and I are pretty on-point. After several grubby hours of packing my dusty belongings and several more of hauling them through the slushy snow, I was really looking forward to a long, hot shower. I stripped down, turned on the water, and waited for it to warm. And waited. And waited. And waited.
No hot water in the new house. Of course. To our credit, the first place we went to was the fuse box. It was dark, we were tired, and it was late, but everything seemed to be in its proper place and alignment. For the next several hours, we futilely turned knobs in tiny, cautious increments so as not to blow up our new house or flood it in murky water. Nothing was making any difference to the temperature of the water. When I looked up at Trenton with resigned, pitiful despair, he kissed me on the top of my dirty head and told me we’d call somebody in the morning. We went to sleep; at least our sheets were clean.
The next day, I woke up to the sound of Trenton’s slightly panicked voice from the kitchen: “Katie?!? There’s water on the floor!”
Fuck. As it turns out, one of those knobs we were twisting was the water line to the refrigerator, and when the pressure was increased, the capacity was overloaded and the excess water dripped down the back of the fridge, onto the floor, through the floor, and into small puddles on the garage floor below. In the process of tracing and resolving the source of the leak, we chanced upon the fuse box again. In the light and clarity of the day, it was obvious that one of the breakers was flipped. Trenton flicked it back the other way and the water heater whooshed back to life. So easy.
I was so excited by the prospect of a hot shower, that I didn’t really give a shit about the puddles of fridge water in the garage. I cleaned myself up and in a few hours, all was right with the world again. Turning off the water line to the fridge had fixed the leak, Trenton had sopped up the puddles, I was clean, and we made crepes. Some with strawberries and some with mushrooms, spinach, and goat cheese.
But that’s another post…