I live in a house that was built in the 50's.  This house is scheduled for demolition in the next 2 years - after they've built nice new houses to move us all into - so they're not looking to do a whole lot of renovation in these places. The lights dim when the heating or a/c kicks in, and the plumbing...well, it leaves a lot to be desired.

After a particularly stressful day last week, I decided that I was going to take a nice relaxing bath.  I started the water running, took off my clothes and wrapped myself in a towel whilst I waited for the tub to fill.  As I was reaching down to turn the bath water off, the hose that supplies water to the toilet tank broke away and started spraying cold, high pressure water all over the bathroom.

It was under such pressure that it hit the ceiling.  I tried the best I could to aim the hose over the tub so that it wouldn't spray all over the bathroom with one hand whilst trying to turn the shut-off valve with the other.  Remember, now, I'm only wearing a towel.

The shut off valve was stuck.  It's been stuck since we moved in despite our asking maintenance to come by and un-stick it.  Because the valve was stuck, I had to use both hands to try and force it.  Which meant letting go of the hose.  Which meant getting water all over the bathroom.

I grabbed my cell phone and called for help.  They said they'd be there in a bit.  A BIT!!!???  The whole fekkin' house could be flooded in 'a bit'!!!!!!!

There I am, cell phone in one hand, a hose that's spraying water all over the place in the other, dressed in a towel that by now is drenched, my ass hanging out as I'm bending over trying to control as much as I can, water dripping off my hair and nose and ears and elbows.....it wasn't pretty.  Not at all.

You know that super-human strength people talk about getting when they're in a crisis?  Yeah, I know all about that now.  After much wrenching, I finally got it shut off.  But not before I had ankle deep water on the floor, had saturated a number of books, 4 toilet rolls and the bath rugs.

I used ALL the towels and half the spare blankets in the linen closet to get the worst of it mopped up, and grabbed a t shirt and shorts to wear for when the maintenence men showed up.

Half an hour later, they come to the door...with a plunger in their hands.  A plunger.  Like I'm some poor little woman who doesn't know the difference between a clogged up pot and a hose breaking loose.  Then, he said that the water dripping from the ceiling was 'cool', and made a comment about duct-taping the hose back up again.

Words were exchanged - actually, he didn't say much, it was me that had a LOT to say, and none  of it was very nice.  I wanted to shove the plunger up his ass, actually, and I almost told him as much.  Anyway, I held back as much as I could, he fixed the toilet and then left me to finish the clean up.

It took me ages.  I had to wring out some of the towels to reuse them, then I had to start a load of laundry so the kids would have clean dry towels to shower with the next morning.

I hate these houses.  I hate that they take $1100 a month for this shit-hole that wouldn't fetch $700 a month on the open market.  I hate that they won't do proper maintenance on these houses because they're going to get torn down, that they simply rig stuff and hope that it holds (they no longer carry the part for the toilet that broke, so they used another part that just so happened to fit.  Who knows how long it will last).  I hate that nothing works the way it's supposed to, that everything has to be jiggled or tweaked or tapped before it opens or runs or turns the way it's supposed to.  I hate that they give us 30 days notice to move into town - and that BAH is paid in arrears.  That means that even if we had wanted to move off base, we couldn't have.  We would have had to come up with deposit for the new place, first month's rent, deposits for all the utilities....we estimated that we'd need $4000 in order to do it.  I don't know of any TechSgt with 3 kids and a stay at home mom who can come up with $4000 2 weeks before Christmas.  So, there are now a bunch of people living in these shit-holes who WANT to live elsewhere but can't because they weren't really given enough notice that this privatisation was going to happen.

But wait, there's more....

This afternoon, the drain in my laundry room started backing up whenever the washer goes into drain and spin mode.  I had water all over the laundry room floor this afteroon.  So, now I have to call them AGAIN and have them come out AGAIN to rig something so it lasts a little bit longer because they don't want to fix things properly because these houses are getting knocked down.

$1100 a month for this. 

Un-fekkin-real.