Because He's a Pro
My tactic in the face of trouble: whine for a while, then curl up with a book and forget about it. In a kitchen that is for the third night in a row far too cold to cook in I say the heck with everything, make a fire in the living room fireplace and do just that.
Old Dave has been doing this for hours already and is now cozily reading one of his bizarre futuristic semi-sci-fi tomes. His solution for any frozen pipe: let God thaw it. Sooooo on this third cold night, I suggest a plumber.
“He’s not going to tell you anything different,” sez Dave. “How do you know?” say I. "Because I know” sez he. "So now you’re the Energy Czar? I mean, you’re no professional” say I. “Yeah but I’m right,”says he.
Then about ten minutes later up he gets and disappears down into our 1890s cellar. When he comes back up he asks if we have a space heater but - ack! - I have just hours earlier donated our one space heater to a family in much worse shape than we are with our books and our fireplace and the wise-cracking wife giving continuous grief to a nice quiet man.
“Come down and see,” he says and so I go down and see what he has done which is to stand first on a rickety old chair and then on a very tall radiator and then pry off a two-by five-foot length of paneling fat with pink insulation to reveal the bare earth floor under the kitchen addition , where running its entire length is the skinny ice-filled pipe that is causing all the trouble.
“Let’s see if this helps,” says Dave, turning the antique black knob on this radiator we have never used, and back upstairs to the fireside we go and whaddya know, what do you know, what DO you know, within 30 minutes we suddenly hear hot water coursing through a well-thawed pipe and into kitchen baseboards. Hurrah!
So maybe he IS the professional after all, what do I know? But hey: I’m the Queen. Oh and I meant to say: this is Dave at the top with that 'I told you so' look he so often gets ... And down at the bottom here, well that's me in the rocking throne from which I rule this roost, allowing my subjects to sometimes approach (as long as they stay on their hands and knees. :-))
