Splish Splash...

So I'm sitting on my bed on Sunday night. The housework is done, the Mr's bag is packed for the airport in the morning and I figured I would get a few Facebook minutes in before sleep. I opened my computer and log in and in a minute or two I am absorbed. The Mr. is at the sink. He has a box of Just for Men mustache/beard dye in his hand and he is reading the label. I watch him out of the corner of my eye for a second as he sets the box down and picks up a pair of dog clippers (don't ask)(and don't worry he cleaned them first) and proceeds to shave half the hair off his head. Again absorbed in my Facebook world I hardly hear him as he interrupts my status update. "I need your help" he says. I glance up to see him looking at me with the clippers in his hand and half his hair gone. He can't reach the back. With a sigh of irritation I set the laptop down and walk over to the sink. I have never shaved anybody's head before and I haven't got a clue how to do this. I gingerly touch his head with the clippers and shave a little off. He watches me in the mirror. Bolder now, I shave a little more and then right as I get the hang of it I pause. I hear water running in the shower next to where we are standing. "Are you running water in the bathroom?" I ask him. "Yes" he replies, "I'm steaming my work clothes." Ummm ok, I'm thinking to myself as I resume shaving his head,  But then I pause again. I hear water. And not from the shower. I hear splashing. "Umm are you running water in the other bathroom?" I ask him. He looks at me in surprise and then panic and then makes a run for the hallway as he hears it too. And then I hear the loud "OH NO!" "HELP!" "GET TOWELS!" "NOW!" followed by an "I'm so sorry". Now this is never good. Never ever ever a good combination. From the first "oh no" my heart sinks. I know that somewhere in my house there is a flood, but I'm not sure where yet. Is it the toilet in the other bathroom overflowing again? NO this is worse, much much worse! The bathroom in our bedroom, the one he is steaming clothes in sits right over the staircase. As I round the corner and look down the stairs I can see that there is a flood of water coming from the ceiling of the stairs, the floor of the bathroom above and soaking the wooden floors/stairs/landing that took me two years to refinish. I am sick. Really, really sick but I'm not wasting time thinking about it. I run back in the bathroom to see why it's overflowing. I step in the room into two inches of water on the floor. The shower is completely full and overflowing onto the carpet in our room. How did we not notice this? I turn off the water and see that the drain is covered by something keeping the water from escaping. I reach down and pick it up and stand there disbelievingly with what looks like a (now wet) square of toilet tissue in my hand. I don't have time to think about it as the water immediately starts draining and I grab towels and run down the the stairs, the site of the disaster, to help the rest of the family in their fight against the flood. I soon realize that this is fruitless, the water is still pouring from the hole in the floor above the stairs where the piping enters the bathroom and connects to the toilet from inside the wall. It is running down the hole, over the electric lights and pouring off the plastic light shields that cover the fluorescent in the hall. I look over at my husband with his half shaved head in his shorts and yell "upstairs, stop it upstairs!" He gets it. Running upstairs towel in hand he begins to stem the flow of water from above. After a few minutes we regain control. The towels are in the washer, every single one we own, there is a trashcan to catch the water with a trashbag on the floor underneath. The floor is dry. The stairs are dry. I turn on the light and inspect the wood. I am really relieved, so relieved, there is no damage. All the layers of varnish I put on years ago have done their work well and protected the hundred year old wood. I'm not exactly smiling as I head back up the sparkling clean staircase, after such an incident, which probably knocked a whole minute off my life, but I'm not too upset either. As I take up my post in front of the mirror, dog clippers buzzing in my hand, husband expectantly waiting, I feel the grin emerging. What a strange wonderful, and sometimes a little bazaar life.