Author: Robin Chartier

Our (camping/Atlantis) friends from Oman came to visit us over the weekend which is why I haven’t blogged in a few days. This photo of Camille is from our brunch at Cafe Lilou’s — french toast made from croissants, with mascarpone whipped cream, berries and white chocolate. If you come visit us, we will go there, I promise. 

Our families have been busy catching up, eating out, and swimming at the indoor waterpark here. I don’t have any pictures because water and iphones don’t mix, but it was an amazing time. I was afraid it would be loud and chlorine-y and I wouldn’t have anything to do with Camille, but they have a beach entry wave pool, lots of splash areas for little ones, a lazy river and a big covered outdoor area with slides/pools. If you come visit us, we can go there too.  

You can also experience the legendary traffic. I took this picture because I was irritated. The two cars on the right are trying to cut in front of the line of cars making a left turn. It wouldn’t be a big deal except when you’ve already been waiting at a light through 3 cycles, you want to kill people when all the line jumpers cause you to miss the light again.  

I need to take a lesson from Camille. Pull out my iPhone, kick back and watch “The Orlax” (The Lorax — her favorite movie), and figure we’ll get there when we get there. Keep Calm and Carry On!

It wasn’t my favorite way to spend a Friday, but it could have been much worse. I was getting ready for church, so I turned on the shower and stepped into the tub, waiting for the water to cool down (we have to drain the super-scalding water from the pipes that run from the roof first, then adjust the mix between the “lukewarm” water and the hot water from the tank). Suddenly the shower head started hissing at me like a snake, the water pressure and the temperature doubled, and I leaped out of the way of the boiling jet that had a life of its own. Within seconds, I was enveloped in steam and could barely see my way out of the bathroom. 

I called for Josh, who is my go-to, fix everything guy and he turned off the shower then tested both the hot and cold sides. The cold side wasn’t giving any water, but we could hear noise in the pipes and a rusty sludge came out. On the hot side was an out of control vapor that would take your skin off. 

I was thinking I would skip the shower and call the plumber when we got home from church when we heard water running — the pipe behind the toilet had started spraying water all over the floor and there was an area of previous repair in the tile wall where water was spraying through the cracks. There was no way to turn off the water at the base of the toilet, so Josh called for towels and we built a “wall” to funnel all the runoff into the bathroom floor drain. 

Josh went to go call the landlord and to find the switch to turn off the water pump. I went out front and found that we were flooding the street . . .

The water covered our front walk, ran down our stairs, out onto the street and around the corner. I didn’t know where it was coming from, but at least that portion of it wasn’t in our house!

But this part was — the boys started yelling that water was coming through the ceiling into the living room. I guess the bathroom drain couldn’t handle all the water and it started coming down like a gentle shower of rain.  

All that water out on the street? It turns out it was coming from the pipe that broke on our roof. A cascade of pipe problems. The pressure in the pipes from the roof tank breaking caused several places in the house to fail. Not only did the plumbers have to go into the wall and fix those breaks, but two days later one of our toilets and showers stopped working because the increased pressure broke their lines as well. I hope that was the last of it — I’m sure the plumbing crew is tired of living at our house. 

Is this thing taking up my entire bed. Feet in my face, sprawled spread-eagle, she has made herself at home in my bed. 

I got up this morning to let the dog out and realized that I had only a small sliver of space between me and the edge of the bed. Josh was in exactly the same situation on the other side.

Between that one and this one, it’s a full house at night. Party till midnight (yes, she does), wake up at 7? I don’t know how she does it.

It was another crazy day today that involved pipes bursting in our house, water all over my bathroom, living room, roof, and front yard and sitting around the house watching repairmen instead of going to church, but sometimes you just have to laugh and carry on. 

I may tell that story tomorrow — it all started with being attacked by my shower head, but tonight I’m curling up with the dog and the girl and watching Survivor (yes, the one with Blair from Facts of Life — same as you’re seeing in the US). 

Yesterday was a rough day, but I crawled into bed at 6:30 and pretended that I didn’t have any kids and didn’t live in Bahrain and Josh took over for the rest of the night. He could tell I was walking the tightrope between sanity and breaking with reality and kept his distance from the very angry lady in our bedroom.

I woke up today with a better outlook . . . nothing has changed except what’s inside my head. If I work on that part, things will be fine here. (I think. I hope.)