No, I haven’t been experimenting with any of the local product! 
I woke up yesterday morning, full of plans of things to do to get ready for my vacation, when I discovered a very unpleasant surprise…after 18 years of faithful service, our waterbed had sprung a leak. And not just a little pinhole leak either…in fact, when I investigated, I discovered to my horror that there was a good half inch of water in the liner. Fortunately, we expected something like this would happen sooner or later, and had laid in a spare mattress, but first, of course, I had to drain the bed (normally a fairly quick and routine procedure). This became particularly urgent when I realized that the liner had a tear in it, and was not going to do its job of containing leaks for very long. I ran downstairs to get the hose, only to discover that the fill & drain kit was missing. I tore apart every cupboard in the house looking for it, and finally concluded that I was going to have to drain the bed without it. Big mistake. First, the end of the hose wouldn’t fit, so, in a fit of “brilliance” (not!) I cut off the metal end of the hose. Sure enough, that went right into the valve, no problem…but, of course, there was no seal and every time I tried to get the water flowing down the hose, it would flow out of the valve instead. The water level in the liner rose to one inch, getting perilously close to the rip in the liner. In desperation I ran downstairs to the phone book and started calling every place I could think of that might carry waterbed supplies. I finally found what is evidently the only supplier of full-wave waterbed supplies left in Santa Cruz County, threw my flu-recovering daughter into the car and drove down to town (still covered in dirty water and looking like I’d survived a flood), grabbed a fill kit (along with a spare liner) and raced back up the mountain. By that time, the water in the liner was up to an inch and a quarter. Of course, I had to bring up yet another hose, as I’d ruined the other one, but I did finally get the bed draining out the window. This is where the alligator wrestling comes in. If you’ve ever drained a waterbed, you know there comes a point where you have to lift it up, and if possible, fold it over, to get the remainder of the water to flow down the hose. So I spent close to a half hour standing in ankle deep, tepid water, wrestling with a huge chunk of uncooperative gold-colored vinyl (and did I mention that yesterday was the hottest day of the year so far? It got over 100 in our upstairs bedroom. Between that and the humidity from all that tepid water, it felt like the tropics, and I was beginning to think I was channeling Steve Irwin! “G-day mates! Check out the rare, magnificent, golden California alligator! Isn’t she a little beauty!”). I finally managed to drain enough water out that I could cap it and wrestle the dead mattress out onto the deck…then I used up every towel in the house sopping the leaked water out of the liner (which, valiant to the last, had just barely managed to contain the leak). By that time, it was 3:00, and I was beat, so I decided to let my hubby deal with setting up and filling the new mattress when he got home. He was fine with that, and started hooking up the hose to the bathroom tap, while I went downstairs to get some much-needed work done. I was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher, when I heard what sounded like a small rainstorm right above my head. I looked up and saw water POURING into our flourescent light fixture! I dashed upstairs shouting “turn the water off! turn the water off!” Turns out the back pressure from the fill kit had caused the pipes under the bathroom sink to go kerplooey. So there I was, mopping up more tepid water while hubby took the hose downstairs to hook it up to the outside faucet, reluctantly filling the waterbed with icy cold well water instead of the nice warm water that would make it comfortable to sleep on that night (it takes a waterbed about 48 hours to warm up if you’re starting with cold water). He came back in to help me remove the saturated light fixture (which, by now, of course, had shorted out), but it slipped as we were taking it down, and he, I and the dog got drenched once again.
It’s a good thing it was a warm night, because we spent it sleeping on top of every blanket we could scrape up to insulate us from that icy cold waterbed. And to cap it, I think I’m coming down with my dear daughter’s flu. Oy.
Oh, and did I mention that I didn’t pick up a whistle at all yesterday? 
I think I need a vacation! Hopefully I won’t be too sick to enjoy it!
Redwolf
