The Fortunate Circumstances of a Leaky Water Heater

This morning I was awakened with the alarming news that there was water on the utility room floor.  Lots of water.  And outside the utility room floor, in the hallway.  My first thought was that the washing machine had malfunctioned, but, no, the water seemed to be coming from the water heater closet.  Uh-oh.

Our water heater has been on its last legs since we bought the house, seven years ago last month.  We figured it finally cracked open.  Picking our soggy way over to the closet, we pulled open the door and prepared for the worst.

Here's where the story gets awesome:

• The water seems to be coming from the top of the water heater, at the in/out lines.  We're not 100% sure, but it looks like we'll be able to fix the lines, and the water heater itself can keep limping along.

• Although the carpet in both the utility room (yes, it is carpeted, huzzah) and the hallway is soaking, we have both a shop vac and a carpet cleaner, to suck the water out. 

• The utility room is stuffed with...well, stuff because we are shed-less at the moment.  And yet, the only things that got wet were a few blankets waiting to get washed, some old shoes, and the outside of plastic storage boxes. 

• Yesterday, after being laundry-lazy for weeks, we washed almost every bit of clothing in the house.  And much of the bedding.  

• Everyone (except poor sick Em) got baths/showers last night.

• Both Bradley and I got a decent night's rest last night, as opposed to the night before--Em was throwing up everywhere, and Bradley spent an hour at 3am cleaning the carpet.

• Because of Em's aforementioned illness, I wasn't planning to go to church today anyway.  So I have spent the morning sucking water out of the carpet.

• Bradley and I spent three days for our anniversary up in Salt Lake last week, and left the children here with my wonderful mother.  The water heater could have busted then, and what a mess that would have been for poor Mema!

• We are going out of town next week for Thanksgiving, and the water heater could have waited until then to break, leaving our carpets wet and the water continually leaking for a week.  Shudder!

So...I don't have hot water right now, it is true.  And I have been vacuuming the carpet downstairs for a long time.  And we don't quite know if we can fix it.

But I am very grateful, all the same!