Sometimes when stuff goes wrong it goes really wrong and then is righted but not totally but righted enough that it feels just right�know what I mean? Well then let me explain.

I was at work today and I was out in the backyard with Erik and Andy when Lisa came to the back door and said something like, �OMG this is really bad. You have to come in here and look!�. Her kitchen floor was flooding. A pipe broke under the sink. Her husband Davis is out of town and she is home alone with two of the founding members of �The Lord of the Flies�. What to do! What to do! Think! Think!

Of course wild boy number 1 starts shouting, �Bah, Bah!� so I take him to the bathroom while Lisa climbs under the sink to investigate. A few moments later I hear spraying water, her swearing and running downstairs. I leave Erik alone in the bathroom, a potential disaster in the making, and run to the kitchen. Hot water was spraying everywhere. I try to capture it with the garbage can while she is shutting it off at the main water source. Which, it turns out, is jacked and won�t completely shut off. Water continues to leak out into a bucket finally coming to a stop when we open all the faucets. What followed was a series of phone calls between a husband and a wife. These kinds of calls scare me. Being single I get a little freaked when I listen to a man and woman trying to come together on a decision via long distance.

The next few hour involved calling plumbers, buying jugs of water, going to my house to pee, a free Pizza from Papa Johns, Sassy freaking the boys out and endless renditions of �The Autism Aria�. Andy in particular has taken to screaming in a way that would bring most member of the Vienna Boys Choir to their knees. It is positively mechanical! He does it without warning and for no apparent reason. When you are sitting in a parking lot and he lets loose you just pray no one calls the cops!

Finally a plumber shows up. He was a worthless, piece of crap. He didn�t want to do the job and if he did do it he said it would be $400! I asked him if he could just �jerry-rig� something until Dave got home and he made some racist comment about �Afro-Engineering�. He claimed to have no parts. And frankly he couldn't get out of the house fast enough. Erik was in his bedroom door swing trying his hardest to be his most autistic...hooting and making strange sounds and Andy was crouched in the front doorway screaming and pinching Lisa because she moved some mystery item that he had positioned a certain way. Lisa said to him (about the boys) "Their...It's hard to explain". HAHAHA! I can only imagine the stories he told when he got home. Get lost Ken!

This is the point at which I got pissed and rose up and said something like � This is Bullshit! We can do this. We�re going to Home Depot and buying a copper pipe cutter and shut-off vales so at least you can turn the water onto the rest of the house!� The boys have to have water...it's a sensory thing. Then I ranted on about how worthless men are. Their out-of-town, or busy, or too tired or too lazy�blah, blah, blah (now, now boys calm down...you know I don't mean it. I was just really irritated and had to take it out on someone!) We loaded the screamers back into the car. Erik was wearing mismatched, shortie army solider pajama�s and refused to put on �real� clothes. He will only wear clothes to school and he knew damn well he wasn�t going school on this crazy Saturday night from hell.

While an overwhelmed and distraught Lisa sat in the car being serenaded by the dueling Sopranos I went into Home Despot and found the first �Dad� looking employee I could find and told him a story about my idiot husband who went out of town and that I needed to fix a plumbing crisis. Well let me tell you Jay helped me out. He explained everything and said it wasn�t a hard job at all. And at that very moment my Dad called and said he would be right over and do it for us. It was 8:00 pm and he had just gotten home from eating out and heard my frantic message about spraying water and needing help.

Less than an hour later he had installed cut-off valves under Lisa�s sink and the water was back on to the rest of the house. The whole problem wasn't solved but was so much better than it had been. My Dad rules. He�s the kind of guy you call when you�ve been arrested and you need to be bailed out. I know because I have. He doesn�t ask questions or chastise people. He just says stuff like �I�m happy to help� and �No problem Sweet Pea�. Lisa tried to pay him and he said �No, no you�re like family." And then he said the way she could pay him back was to lookout for me when the day comes that he's too old to do it himself.

I called my Dad late on Saturday night to come to a friends house and help with an emergency plumbing crisis and he showed up in record time with his tool kit in hand. I�ve got the best Dad in the whole world! I guess not all men are worthless after all!