“G, come here! There’s water in the hall!” I was lying in bed, half-asleep, thinking, “I should go ahead and get up while I’m half awake instead of waiting until I start drifting into a deeper sleep,” but that certainly got me up in a hurry. There was a puddle in the hallway that led down to the back bedroom and ran between the kids’ bedroom and the kitchen. I moved into the living/dining room area to find a bigger puddle there. Multiple puddles. We looked to find the source and quickly determined it was coming from under the kitchen sink. I reached under to turn off the water, hoping it was just something in the connection from the wall to the faucet when, getting quite a bolt of electricity shooting through my arm, I realized that whoever installed the garbage disposal had not done so according to code.

We located the load center only to discover that not a single breaker was labeled. I did the logical thing: I turned everything off. Armed with the flashlight on my phone, I went back to the kitchen and tried to turn the water off, but it only increased the flow: the actual connector was somehow loose and trying to turn it off only compromised the connection further.

In the midst of all this, I was trying to get in touch with our Air B&B host:

Major issue here. The kitchen sink was leaking. Water everywhere in the floor.
Today at 7:41 AM

Tried to turn the water off. Got a good shock from the garbage disposal
Today at 7:42 AM

Found the power shut off and turned it off. Tried to turn off the water under the kitchen sink but it’s still leaking.
Today at 7:56 AM

Not dripping but literally running.
Today at 7:56 AM

We put a bucket under the sink, but the only thing we found was a metal bucket. I’d turned the power back on so that we wouldn’t be sweltering in a few moments and told the kids just to stay on the bed and off the floor — it seemed unlikely that anything could happen, but why take a chance? When the bucket got full, K asked if she should just the bucket it out to empty it.

“Not unless you want to get a shock,” I said. I told her to just stand there as I went through the breakers and tell me when I’d disconnected the power to the kitchen. I reached to turn off one breaker; nothing. I turned off the second; nothing. I reached to turn off the third and, touching the metal of the breaker box itself, got a little shock.

“Screw this,” I thought, grabbed a plastic hanger, and turned off all the breakers.

Still no word from our host. I sent another message:

Just got shocked at your breaker board trying to figure out which breaker is for the kitchen.
Today at 8:08 AM

The host finally arrived — “finally” I say because from our perspective, it seemed to be an almost endless ordeal — and I told him everything that had happened. Texts can only provide so much detail.

Needless to say, we didn’t stay another night. There are apparently plumbing and electrical issues galore in the place not to mention water everywhere, and so we went through day as planned and then drove an hour and a half south to cut our driving time to the Everglades tomorrow.

And what was planned? A visit to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, which really should be called an animal hospital. We got to see Winter, the tail-less dolphin who inspired a movie, sea turtles missing fins, sharks that had been caught by a commercial fisherman who didn’t realize that they would grow to be as big as they did and asked the CMA to help — a host of wounded and healing animals. It included a boat trip with a marine biologist who talked about the various animals they trolled for in the bay, then pulled up nets and with an assistant took inventory of what they found.

A final afternoon at the beach and we packed our bags and headed further south. Tomorrow, on to the Everglades.