It's time that we homeowners accepted the fact that plumbing is a bad idea. Many historians believe that the primary reason why the Roman empire collapsed is that the Romans attempted to install plumbing in it. Suddenly, instead of being ruthless, all-conquering warriors, they became a bunch of guys scurrying around trying to repair leaking viaducts. Plumbing can sense the arrival of a houseguest, and it often responds by leaking or causing toilets to erupt like porcelain volcanoes. She was fixated on this roof theory.
Women can be like that.
So I got my flashlight and climbed up a ladder into the attic, where I was able, thanks to my experience as a homeowner and my natural mechanical sense, to get pieces of insulation deep into my nose. So I came briskly back down the ladder and told Michelle that, to stop the plumbing from leaking, I was going to turn off all the water to the house until the plumber came. Speaking in clipped, efficient, manly sentences, I instructed Michelle to fill containers with water and write a note for the houseguest telling him how to flush his toilet with a bucket. Sometimes a man has to put his manly foot down. So while Michelle wrote toilet-flushing instructions for our houseguest and prepared a small apologetic basket of fruit and cookies, I tried to locate the valve that would shut off all the water.