Drama and Waterworks

Last night we were jolted out of bed by a sound like an angry bull gorging our front door or maybe the upstairs neighbor pushing her sofa down five flights of stairs.

As it turns out, our piece-of-shit water-heater, formally plastered on the wall in the bathroom, decided to unhook itself and come crashing down. Water squirting everywhere, broken tiles, broken wall. It was 3AM.

Normally, I would have been irritated, but this water-heater has been the bane of our existence here in Spain.

Heated by electricity because our batty landlord is afraid of people dying from gas leaks, the tank allows for exactly 3.23 minutes of luke-warm water before it spews an ice-cold waterfall on your head. In the dead of winter, when we had no heater, this was the simple reason we took no showers for many days and thus realized the true meaning of "dirty Europeans."

In February, Ted let it slip that he joined a gym just so he could take a decent shower and dry himself with a dry towel.

 Sucker! I would never sink to such a level (but I did quit shaving for a very long time).

Now it's Semana Santa, the most precious week of the whole year, and no plumber is going to leave his fiesta to fix our shower. We will be smelly grease-balls until Tuesday, at the earliest. No biggie.

Normally, one could ask a neighbor to borrow a shower, but in Lleo 9, we already know how that will go down.

Water, in our building, is like fine wine. Nobody lets a drop go free.

Case in point: Thursday is stair-cleaning day and each door must put out 1 liter of water so we all share the cost of a bucket of water (which must be like 0.0001E). I guess Spain really is in a "creeee-sis". 

The lady below refuses to do even this. Every Thursday, she marches down to the city fountain and fills up her bucket with the obligatory one liter.

I may seem like I am complaining, but I'm not. I love the drama. All afternoon, I've been hibernating inside our apartment listening to the neighbors chatter about that horrendous noise of last night and build theories about what happened. "Did So-and-So have that large man spend the night?" "I bet So-And-So quit taking her medicine, had an accident..."

I could easily explain the situation, but the neighbors will find out soon enough. The plumbers, when they come, will surely drag in dust and dirt, cause a ruckus and require more water from the cleaning lady who might have to come twice in one week! Heaven forbid! And the drama will continue...