When we last left our victims, the cowboy-turned-plumber had been made aware of a possible skunk under the house just as a main waterline blew. He had given up the claustrophic chore of crawling beneath the concrete to conquer the catastrophe, postponing it until tomorrow. But the dreaded “TOMORROW” is now today. BUT soon there will be water and all will be well.
Well. Water. See what we did there?
COMMERCIAL BREAK (because our dilemma is like a train wreck and you can’t look away, we dare to advertise earlier in the show, knowing you will stay tuned for more.)
Stephanie begins her day as usual, up at the crack of 8 or 8:15. She meanders to the bathroom, turns the faucet to run her water, and is faced with the harsh reminder: NO water. No hot morning bath. She plugs in the curling iron and brushes her teeth from a dwindling pitcher of lukewarm water. Lukewarm water and toothpaste first thing in the morning. Gag.
NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS!!!
AND, to make matters worse, one of the vanity lights is blown, leaving her face only half lighted. And it’s not the pretty half. She brushes through her hair and begins to curl. But something is not right. Something is quite wrong. Her hair is flat. A tragic by-product of sleeping on damp hair the night before. She curls more. And more. Lifting and spraying as she goes. Despite her best efforts, her hair WILL be flat today. Flat. And she has to go out in public. In public. Where there are people. Real people. Who will see her flat hair. The horror. The horror! (cue melodramatic music)
COMMERCIAL BREAK FOR BUMPITS. “Bumpits -from flat to fabulous in seconds”.
Back home that evening, humiliated by her bad hair day, Stephanie begins dinner… watermelon, watercress salad, roasted water chestnuts. The cowboy arrives from work some minutes later, 
looking like a decaying extra from The Walking Dead. He hurts. All over. Neck pain. Back pain. Knee pain. “Bad day,” he comments, “aching all over. Swelling. Pain. Head hurts”
“It might be a tumor,”Stephanie snarks.
“It’s not a tumor,” the cowboy groans. He is in no shape nor mood to go to Plumb-o-Rama, much less do the plumbing repairs.
No shape at all.
Disheartened and dusty, Stephanie must face the reality that there will be no running water again tonight. She thinks, “So this is how the people in Mississippi feel.”
COMMERCIAL BREAK
Yet another day without water. The laundry is piling up. The dishwasher is overloaded. The pitchers of water are running dangerous low. The toilet is being flushed with a 5-gallon bucket of pond water.
Will the promise of a hot shower ease the cowboy’s aches and pains? Will he be able to complete this job with one MORE tomorrow?
After all, tomorrow is another day.
Stephanie raises her fist to the sky,
“With God as my witness, I’ll never have flat hair AGAIN!”
Stay tuned for the thrilling season finale of PipeBusters on The Reality Channel.
Removing the exterior vent cover nearest the central air unit, the cowboy-turned-amateur-plumber-because-heaven-forbid-we-pay-someone-to-do-a-job-today-that-he-can-do-himself-for-free-not-counting-supplies-over-a-period-of-several-days ‘army crawls’ into the damp darkness. Once he is securely wedged under the center of the house, he begins to bang and groan and saw. Stephanie chooses this critical juncture to share important information by yelling through the floor of the kitchen.
Stop the choir! The rejoicing was woefully premature, and the repair only served to stress the line further toward the front of the house, causing a full-on rupture of the pipe.
Emergency showers are taken. Legs are left unshaven (and this is NOT November! The cowboy is risking serious stubble burn if he has his sights set on snuggling.)
The synchronized stoppage of the strange hissing sound in sync with her son’s shower and the incoming text is an awfully big coincidence. (Of course, everyone knows, there are no big coincidences or small coincidences, only coincidences.) Still, she grabs her glowing purple cell, eager to discover who, WHO, has texted at this wee hour of 8:15 a.m.??? It’s the cowboy, who left for work just after discovering the hissing noise. Text: Wrench in garage. Leak under house. Turn water off at meter.
Now Stephanie runs her bath water while the washer fills, simultaneously her son fills 2 pitchers, brushes his teeth. Miraculously the laundry finishes spinning only moments after Stephanie’s legs are shaved…DONE! And in record time – only 38 minutes from text to wrench twist and the water is OFF!
Read up on epidurals and episiotomies; C-sections and vitamin K shots; vaccinations and circumcisions; fetal monitoring and forceps; meconium and mucous plugs; contractions and colostrum; dilation and doulas; VBAC and PRoM; breech babies and birth positions; posterior presentation, placentas, pitocin & postpartum depression, and for heaven’s sake, PARENTING.
Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.
Anyway, my quest for simplicity finally led me to this 16×20. I love it dearly, but it is woefully dated and needs to go (much like that herb-laden wallpaper border in the kitchen. But that requires a stepstool and a boxcutter and two hours of my time, and I’d rather whine about it than strip it. But I digress.)
he giveaway is a Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea game? Icky Yucky Ooky. She may only be five years old, but she’s smart enough to know that Jules Verne, and for that matter, all Science Fiction stuff is for boys. And she did NOT want boy stuff. No thank you very much. Besides, surely they wouldn’t call out a girl’s name for a boy’s toy. That would just be mortifying – like that awkward moment when the boy in front of you toots and then looks at you so everybody else will think it WAS you. She’s rather die. But she told herself there was nothing to worry about. Only a 1 in 30 chance even if they DID include the girls, “Which they wouldn’t,” she thought just as they announced … HER name. WHAT? NOOOOO!
And that, boys and girls, was the beginning of my lucky streak. I have gone on to win tickets and gift certificates to nice restaurants and books and videos and essay competitions and savings bonds and a video player and $200 in a photo contest and numerous cds, weekend getaways, a smart tv, and if you have EVER been to a “sales party” with me, be it Pampered Chef or Creative Memories or Tupperware or whatever, you know my name is ALWAYS the one that gets drawn for the door prize. Always.
compartments with magnetic snaps, a separate pouch for the progressive trifocals I never wear, and a small zippered pocket so I always know where to locate my elusive keys.
So I typed, “To who?” but I couldn’t do it. Before I hit SEND, my Zero Tolerance Approach to Bad Grammar required me to correct the blunder, so I changed it to“To whom?” and pressed the green button.
she said 
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