Part 1 - a penguin, garbarge disposal, hot water tank and barf

I was looking forward to a relatively quiet weekend with my kids unlike last weekend which was packed full of adventure, extended family and lot of fun. See previous post. Colin has had to work seven days in a row, which is fairly uncommon for him, and his shifts have been EVERY evening and his commute is almost 3 hours to and from combined. I haven't seen much of him this week. Friday night was no different. We had some friends over, had pizza and and the kids watched Bolt. I can't remember how I killed the time between the time they left and the time I headed to bed, that being 11pm. I loaded the rest of the dishes and proceeded to clean out the sink. I turned on the garbage disposal. The smaller sink bubbled up with the water and would not drain down. I turned the disposal off and put my hand in to see what might be the problem. Nothing. I tried again. Same thing. I put my hand in one more time and pulled out a little toy penguin. I think Jack told me he put it in there. All this time I am on the phone with Colin. I looked under the sink and water had sprayed all over. I proceeded to pull everything out and see what was going on. The water was dripping from the plastic plumbing pipe to the pipe in the wall. I figured that I could do a little trouble shooting and fix it since I was guessing it was a clog. About 20 minutes in to this problem I hear a child walking around upstairs then Cole crying. Jack had gotten up and tried to find me in Cole's room. I really wanted to get back to the sink so I put Jack in my bed, nursed Cole and thankfully they both went back to sleep quickly. Back downstairs I worked some more. It was almost 12am and my patience was thin. I got back on the phone with Colin, told him I would work on it in the morning. While still talking I went to the basement to put a load of clothes in the dryer and opened the laundry room door to WATER on the FLOOR, soaking the laundry that was waiting to be washed and the carpet remanants that were down. My thoughts flew back to last summer when I damaged the PVC pipe that goes around the perimeter of the laundry room and carries the condensation from the A/C to the floor drain. I started scoping things out and soon realized that the water was slowly streaming from the hot water tank towards the drain in the floor that was about 15feet away. Ahhhhhh!!!! I didn't know at that moment what to do. I could see water dripping and leaking from the bottom of the tank in an almost steady stream. Colin wasn't sure what to do either. I got my home warranty book out and got on the phone. All I could do was make a claim with their automated system. No matter what I dialed or what I said I coudln't talk with a live person. HOwever, I knew I had to turn the water off before getting to bed. So, I called my Dad. He walked me through the process of turning off the water to the hot water tank, turning off the gas which always makes me nervous, and draining the water out. Thankfully the only things that were wet was a box with our 72 hour kits in it that happened to be in those giant zip lock bags, some laundry that I could immediately wash and the pieces of carpet that were heavy with water but I could just put them into the laundry sink close by. I called Colin back and off to bed I went. To be continued......