Yesterday was a long day.

My iPhone pinged with an incoming email, right by my head, on my nightstand, waking me / not waking me enough to get my mind working at 4am. I thought “Well, I better look at it!” I grabbed the phone and opened my emails…

Da sent out an message saying he had just called 911 to take him to a hospital. He wasn’t sure which one but he’d let us know. His pancreas cysts were acting up again and he had been in pain for two days.

This thing again, I thought. I rolled over onto my back and laid there wondering if I should get up and try to hunt down which hospital he was in. After 30 min of alternating between being the good son (yelling at myself to get up and get on the phone) or being the bad son (trying to get back to sleep), my bowels won out. I hoofed it to the loo.

While sitting on the throne, one of the cats groggily came into the bathroom and mew-ed at me as if to say “Look. I’m going into the tub to drink some water!” (the cats demand a slow dripping tap to drink from – take THAT environment!). George Hamilton jumps into the tub and from behind the shower curtain, lets loose with louder meows. I crane my neck around the wall to see that the tap wasn’t dripping. I finish my biz and stand and flush. The horror commences. The sound from the toilet tank was like a inter-dimensional mucus monster materializing through a swamp. The toilet roared and kakked and the bowl didn’t refill with water (thankfully the biz was gone though). I try opening the tub tap which resulted in chest-wound sucking sounds. The rest of the sinks in the apartment responded in kind.

I poured the cat a bowl of water. Best I could do, George Hamilton, sorry.

Bad son won out. I got back into bed and manage to catch another 15 min of sleep. When we both woke, I told SharkBoy of both problems. As we shuffled around the apartment trying to decide what we should do, one of the taps gasped a horrific gasp and then started to sputter water like a drag queen asked to check her mink stole. But it wasn’t actually water…

From the faucet came this orangey brown liquid that deposited sand like granules all over the tub. The other sinks were spewing out the same sludge. At least we had water! We ran it for a while with no reprieve from the brown.

After a while, SharkBoy discovered that there was clean water coming from the hot water tap, probably from the hot water tank that was unaffected by the pipes that delivered us this goo. We quickly hopped into the tub and took fast showers. Whore’s Baths, really.

After a while the cold water came back to it’s clear state but I made the mistake in brushing my teeth in it too soon. My mouth still tastes like swamp today.

The resulting day of an early trip to the hospital, Apple store visit (to sign my work contract) revisit to the hospital, trip to Da’s to get supplies/books/toiletries and back to the hospital, left me utterly wiped.

When we came home from hospital last night, we immediately turned on the kitchen sink to see if all was better. For some reason was only running at less than half pressure and had this coming out of it:

It ran like this for about 15 minutes then went clear. Seems ok this morning but still very slow.

Dad is ok. He’s bored but had a bad night sleeping but he looks a lot better than he did yesterday. Doctors will be keeping him until Monday and will be poking and prodding his gut on a regular basis. News as it happens.