there ain't no stinkin' leak

Huge day yesterday. I spent a part of the morning waiting on customers, and better part of the afternoon answering the phone. Highlights of my day, morning customer, not sure of the situation. We have those customers that shop every once-in-a-while, whenever they're in Evanston, maybe used to live or work here, buy up loads and keep it in their freezer. This fella coulda been one of them. He just kept orderin'. I wasn't taking care of him, but I kept hearing,"six of those, two coffee cakes",etc. When he asked for eighteen large heart cookies, I offered to help box them. Then he asked me for four of each flavour macaron. He said "My wife loves those things, and they're every bit as good as the ones we pay four dollars a piece for, at the Galleries Lafayette, in Paris". I know that LaDuree has a counter in that store. For someone to compare our macarons to LaDuree. My feet didn't touch the ground the rest of the day.

Another thing, yesterday, as I was answering the phone, I took six calls in a row. Five of them were first time callers. I know that because neither their name or their phone number was in our database. And calling from a distance, Schiller Park, forty two hundred north, in Chicago, thirteen hundred west Fulton, and so on. The one caller, that was previously entered asked who I was, and I told her. She had nothing but good things to say about the bakery, and how things have improved since she was child. Again, things that pleased me very much.

But ya know, every now and then, the powers that be, do things that keep life on even keel. Yesterday morning, one of the cleanup guys came to me and said there was a leak in the basement. Being a busy Friday, and the fact that he wasn't the least bit wet, I figured I would get to it soon. These guys have come to me in the past, about a leak, and water is dripping from the bill of their hat. Then, I know we have a leak. About thirty minutes later, I asked Matt if he noticed a leak, in the basement. He replied "No". I didn't think anymore about it. An hour later I went downstairs for some corn meal, and I noticed it. A little trickle, from under a skid of flour, that was against the basement wall. Hunh, where could that be coming from? I got a drop light and looked under the skid, and it was running from the base of the wall, where it meets the floor. Behind that wall, solid earth, that God hasn't seen for a century. I felt the wall, and the water was coming right thru the stone wall. About four feet above the floor, to the floor, sixteen feet left to right, soaked. Oh my God, I was sure at any moment, it was gonna be like a T.V. sitcom. Water was gonna blow thru the wall and press me up against a stack of sugar bags. I went and mentioned to Matt, that I found the leak they were talking about. Matt never says much, other than, "Woa, that's bad", or the comforting "Not good". He grabbed the light and held it close to the wall, and like an archeologist, moved it left to right, near the wall, "Not good". He went to the corner of the basement, raised the light, and said "I see it. Real bad. Look". I looked and about six feet back in the crawl space, gallons of water were running over the I-beam. Like a mountain creek. We measured and decided it was coming from where the two sink drains came together, inside a wall. I called my dad over, and he said "I think it more than we can handle. Better call someone". It's Friday afternoon, 2pm. I'm sure we would get typical plumbers response "I'll be right there". He'll show up on Tuesday morning. We need this fixed NOW. We can't work without water. We/I/my family, are fortunate for a lot of things in life. But being next door to a hardware store is invaluable. Matt opened up the wall, and we found the leak, leak hell, the two inch galvanized pipe was gone. Literally, gone.It was a vertical pipe, sixteen inches tall, that forty percent of the circumference was gone, the entire length. Matt went to cut it out with a sawzall, the the pipe just collapsed. He put it all back together and inside of two hours we were back in business. We are gonna let it dry out for a few days, and we'll close up the wall. Matt, thanks, you saved the day(again).

Gotta get upstairs, once again, cupboards are bare. That's why we make it, right? Got that guy comin' all the way from Schiller Park. Gotta make sure his stuff is ready when he gets here.