Chaos Ensues.

Thankfully, it stuck around for only an hour.

We had a pretty quiet evening. Mostly because Celia was way overtired and I plopped her butt in bed at 8:00 on the dot. Jordan was watching a movie, then went up to his room to play with Legos. I went up at 9:00 and helped him with his fluoride treatment and put him in bed.

I came downstairs and decided just to relax a little. M*A*S*H was on and I wanted to watch it again as I'm all nostalgic over it now. (As long as they keep showing the lighter ones!) I also decided to pig out a little. I made tea, had an English muffin, then decided I needed some snack mix. I went down to the basement (where I keep my huge stockpile of free stuff....I'll show it to you sometime when I'm feeling more friendly).

I get down there and notices that the corner is leaking again (big surprise, it only leaks when the ground is REALLY saturated....you know, like it is right now...) and a hissing.

My first freak out is natural gas. I had a nightmare about that around 3 weeks ago. That didn't last long as I didn't smell any natural gas (or anything, for that matter. Which is pretty funny since our basement usually smells like butt).

Then I realized that carbon monoxide was colorless and odorless! Ack! But that doesn't slowly eek out of a pipe....it's a combustion byproduct.

That leaves water. I figure out what pipe I think the hissing is coming from. It's not a heat pipe, I'm 99% sure it's not a gas line (just in case my sense of smell is all off, or the gas company figured that since prices went up they could no longer afford to make it stinky), but there is no water anywhere on that side of the basement.

I debate about it and decide to call my neighbor. I would hate for my house to blow up in the middle of the night after I kind of knew something was wrong and didn't do anything about it. He tells me he's on his way and I open the big door....which causes the alarm to beep (it beeps when any door or window is opened) and for some reason this wakes Celia up. (We open the door frequently after she's asleep and it usually never bothers her).

So I run up the steps and tell her to go back to sleep and back down to watch for the neighbor. She usually just needs a little "it's night, go back to sleep" and she settles right down. Not tonight. No sooner do my feet his the bottom step than she's fussing again. I peek in Jordan's room on the way past and see that he's still up, reading "The Hobbit" so I send him down to watch for the neighbor. I pat Celia for awhile and come back down, neighbor is here, and I send Jordan to bed.

We go down to the basement and friendly neighbor uses his pocket flashlight to trace the pipe behind a bookcase and through a wall to our Pittsburgh Potty.

Ours is actually an updated version. It was placed under the stairs for a little privacy (though only enough headroom for one of Jordan's hobbits to use) and a door was added. We gut us a fancy bathroom!

It's not been used since we have moved in. But it's there. In case of extreme emergency, it's there.

And now it's leaking.

Celia starts fussing again. I dart upstairs just long enough to implore her to go back to sleep.

Back down to the basement to find friendly neighbor wrestling with a rusty shut off valve. He manages to get it shut off and I send him on his way, with some of my peanut butter m&m's as payment.

Celia decides to fussy again, this time she has to go potty. I totally didn't intend on night training her, I'm completely happy leaving her in diapers overnight. But she isn't, so we get up, she pees. Then I rock her a little and put her back down.

Into Jordan's room to tell him that all the noise is over and he MUST go to sleep, since it's now 10:10 on a school night!

Now all that I've got to deal with is three very rambunctious cats (there was another person in the house AND he opened up a room in the basement that they were NOT allowed to explore).

And of course, my snack mix....which is what started this whole she-bang in the first place.