ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

For a long time our apartment building has had very little hot water, and in the past couple of years the management has tried often to fix this, requiring that their tenants endure frequent water stoppages for “repairs”. The situation was annoying, but not completely intolerable. Then last week, out of nowhere, they scheduled another water shutuff. The next day we realized something was very different: we had hot water. And water pressure. It was like a party at our house…a beautiful party of being able to cleanse yourself in water warmer than Lake Michigan in January.

Alas, this lasted but three days. Three glorious days. They decided abruptly that something else required fixing in the lines, so after the latest round of repairs (a word that I use hesitantly to describe the activity that must have occurred) our sweet water heaven seems to be gone forever. Now our water is hot, but unfortunately it can’t make up its mind whether it prefers to scald or freeze us now, since it changes rapidly between these two extremes every sixty seconds or so. I read in a book that this, accompanied by the knocking sound I hear every now and again, is a sign that the diameter of the water pipes is too narrow, a fact that I interpret to mean that this problem will not end as long as we live here.

I think I liked it better before they fixed it.