I've been super busy. I'm still gathering things for my book lovers' contests--it's fun--I'll have pictures soon. I've also been writing (as always) and traveling over the holiday season. Busy, busy, busy. --- Mya

He's now down to seven meals a day (from about twelve) and today I caught a glimpse of his shoulder blades under all that extra blubber, so I took him into the bathroom and tried to sit him on the scale.

"No way," he said. "I'm not putting my fine, furry kitty-butt on that hard, cold bathroom scale. Forget it."
"But I want to see how your diet is going," I said.
He responded by steeling his shoulders, giving me a condescending look, and removing himself from the scale before the wagging dial could settle down and tell me his weight. He obviously wasn't going to permit me to sit him on that infernal device a second time ("Missed your chance, nyah."), so I weighed myself, then picked him up and realized I had a problem.
I don't have one of those talking bathroom scales. I don't believe in having conversations with menial appliances, especially if they start sounding smarter than I. The day I get a talking bathroom scale, I'll stop writing and let the scale dictate stories. Hopefully that will never happen.
Anyway, Nabokov was getting restless.
With any other cat, glancing down at the dial would have been easy. But Nabokov is huge. He completely blocked my view of the dial. Leaning back didn't help. I couldn't lean back far enough to see without tipping over backwards and Nabokov didn't like the new angle--he started to kick his way out of my arms. He's not used to being held. In fact, when I first adopted him it was clear that he wasn't even used to being touched.
I had to think of a quick solution, so I tried crouching, but then my knees obscured the dial. Finally I was able to crouch and lean sideways and get a quick glance. From what I can tell, with the cat wiggling one way and the dial waggling the other way (and a bit of basic arithmetic), he's lost another half pound.
Great! One more pound to go and he'll be at a healthy weight. --- Mya

The cat hurried to the top of the stairs and turned to give me his "What is THAT?" look. Then he listened intently and accompanied me downstairs.

"Oh, oh," I said. "Something's definitely not right."

The roaring sound was louder and more complex. It seemed to have an added whooshing tone at this distance.

I opened the garage door and stared in horror. Water was pouring out of the wall, spraying over boxes and shelves, shooshing toward the tools and the lawn mower. A pipe had burst. "It must be a really big pipe," I said to the cat. He was watching from the doorway and had no intentions of entering a room where the water was deeper than the thickness of a sheet of paper.

Then I panicked because I remembered that many of the cardboard boxes on the floor of the normally-dry garage were filled with books, manuscripts, and photos. I switched into high gear, grabbed a sponge-mop and started bailing some of the water out through the garage door. Then I did my best to try to rescue the boxes. It was not a good situation.

Putting Things in Perspective. Now, part of me was really upset about finding myself in such terrible circumstances. The other part was remembering that floods, real floods, can devastate whole cities, can lead to terrible loss of life. My flood was inconsequential in the big scheme of things, yet it seemed terribly important at that moment when all I could think of was stopping the gushing flow of water and saving my things.

What should I do? I looked at the cat. He was primly sitting in the doorway, watching. Obviously, he figured this was my problem. Then I realized I had to shut off the water. Why had the pipe burst? Probably because it had been warmer for a few hours in mid-day. Where the heck was that shutoff valve? It's not like I use it every day.

I stumbled outside without a jacket, too intent on shutting off the water to realize it was 32 degrees F and I needed to dress more warmly. I searched around in the dark at the side of the house for the main water main. There it was, a simple, rusted metal rod sticking out of the dirt.

I looked back in the garage. The water level was rising. I was losing ground. If I didn't get it shut off soon, everything would be destroyed, the drywall, the books, the papers, the pictures. I cranked on the rod with my cold hands and nothing happened. The ground was still frozen solid and the shutoff valve was about a foot below ground. There was no way to turn off the water without digging out the rod.

Deeper and Wetter. I ran back to the spouting pipe and bailed some more of the water out through the door, then grabbed a shovel and started digging. The ground was hard and rocky and I was getting cold. I dropped the shovel, bailed some more and ran upstairs to get a jacket.

It took another couple of minutes of frantic digging to reach the valve. At this point I thought it would be easy to turn the rod. It wasn't. I wasn't strong enough or something else was impeding it that I couldn't see.

Time to call in the reserves. I ran for the phone and called a friend. "Heeeeelppp!" I said. "I can't keep up. The pipe burst. I can't shut it off, the rod is rusted or seized up or something."

After ringing off, I started bailing again and counted the seconds and minutes until help arrived. It seemed to take forever, when, in fact, he showed up in about twenty minutes, which wasn't bad, since he had driven across town. By that time, I thought my arms were going to fall off. Fortunately, he was able to find the problem and shut off the main water supply. I then realized I would be without drinking and toilet water until the pipe was fixed. Unfortunately, I know nothing about plumbing. This wasn't something I could easily fix myself and the hardware stores were all closed.

I thanked my friend, bailed out the rest of the water, closed the garage door, and surveyed the damage. The lumber and paint cans were all soaked, the drywall was the consistency of regurgitated oatmeal--totally ruined, the shelves were wet, but somehow I had managed to bail enough and move the boxes far enough to avoid any major catastrophes. I was so thankful.

From the doorway, Nabokov gave me his, "Are we done yet? Can I eat now?" look and I realized his food dish had been in the path of the "storm." I refilled his dish with fresh food, which he immediately taste tested. I then hurried upstairs to wash the dirt off my hands.

Life's Inconveniences. As soon as I turned on the tap in the bathroom, I remembered there was no water. Then I realized I was thirsty and there was no water. Time to go into survival mode. We take so much for granted. How many people in this part of the world have to walk five miles each day to haul water? There are many countries where people still do that. How many people don't have indoor plumbing? I have a friend who lives about twenty miles north, in a small community where many people still don't have indoor plumbing. She only just had a toilet installed a few years ago. If there's one thing I really, really love about modern society, it's running water. Cold and hot running water. We forget that it's such a luxury. --- Mya

Anyway, after tearing out insulation, I realized I couldn't fix the pipe entirely by myself. I'm not too bad with electrical things and computer hardware, but plumbing, well, I don't have the right tools and I don't have the know-how. I don't even have a how-to book on plumbing (I'll have to remedy that). After watching the fix-it operation, it's clear that I would have botched the job. I didn't know you needed to put flux on the heated metal in order to solder the joint. Live and learn. Oh, and that HUGE pipe turned out to be about an inch in diameter. I have no idea how so much water could gush from such a small pipe.

Unfortunately, the two-by-fours were soaked, the drywall had to be replaced along an eight-foot stretch, and the cement floor was so wet it smelled like wet dog (still does, actually). Well, it could have been worse and things are pretty much back to normal now. The only complication was that I had to have an electrical wire installed along the length of the pipe to keep it warm in the winter. The electrical wire has to wrap around the 2 by 4s, since I didn't want to drill more holes, and thus the chip board that was used to patch the place where the drywall was ruined had to have little "bump-holes" cut to allow the wire to protrude around the studs.

It seems strange to have to heat a pipe. The wall is insulated, but the room isn't, so that's why the pipe froze. Now I just have to remember to plug in the pipe wire every winter so it doesn't happen again. --- Mya