La la la PACKING...

And suddenly I'm FREE!!

It's an odd sensation the opposing emotions that come with packing for a big move. You are at once excited about the prospects of a new place, but saddened when you think of all that will be left behind. Especially friends.

But the thing that is striking me the most this weekend as I prepare for the westward move all the way across the country to California (!) is that as I work to shed at least 60% of my belongings, I'm at first overwhelmed and upset at all the things that I should leave behind. But, then, I reorganize my thoughts. I think about the possible uses someone else might get from that stuffed animal/book/picture frame/shirt/CD/pot/pan and I am excited for my belonging's new adventure that lies ahead. And, you know what, once I say "goodbye" it's such a FREEING feeling!

I mean, that's less weight I'm carrying around. The next time I move, I won't have to ponder whether or not to take that sentimental-yet-lives-in-a-box-stuffed-animal. I can remember the person who gave it to me, and when I run across a photo of me with that little stuffed lion, I can smile with fond memories, in a much lighter form. Really, how often do we sit down with our "stuff" and re-live memories in the course of our life time? Probably as often as we move, unless we are looking at pictures or the item(s) is out on display. So, my new rule is - if it's not functioning regularly or it's lived in a box since the last move...it's out the door.

Think of all the room I have for new stuff now!!! ;-)

(Okay, I admit...I'm stilling storing some sentimental items. I'm not that strong-willed! But I'm trying to scan most of the written goods! It's the hand-crafted items that are too good to part with, but too bulky to move across the nation!)

Flood 'Em Out!

Last Wednesday (the really rainy one), I was suppose to go to this networking event after work. But it got cancelled. So instead, I stayed late at the office organizing, planning, catching up on this and that. Sorting e-mails, you know... Just general crap that I'm usually too distracted to do at home.

Finally, around 8:30 or 9:00pm I left work for home. I was exhausted. I was hungry. All I could think of was when I would get home, kick up my feet, eat a nice dinner and unwind while knitting or watching one of several Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes on my dvr.

Wasn't I pleasantly surprised to come home to a freshly watered down bedroom?

Answer: NO. I WASN'T!

I took off my boots and socks in the bedroom and put my foot down into a nice cool puddle of water at the foot of my bed. What? Had I really dragged in all that water? NO. So where did it come from?

I looked up.

Answer 1:

Dripping, coke-like stain on ceiling.

I looked to my right.

my whole wall is swollen with water!

I take a closer look at the wall

water is literally dripping
and crawling down my wall...

It seems the only thing keeping my room from being completely flooded is the paint that is somehow wrapping the water in little bubbles like a fish swimming in a plastic baggie.

Oh, but wait...I guess the ceiling is not painted and couldn't contain the flood.
You see this big stack of clothes here? This is the freshly laundered stack of clothes that I didn't wear because I didn't want them to get wet on this rainy day.

Well, guess what? They are SOAKED. Six items deep on the top - all sweaters and jeans - Completely and utterly SOAKED. All the way through!

I suppose I should be thankful that my clothing hadn't been put away yet, or that puddle on my bedroom floor would have been more like a lake.

With all the mildewy musty perfume of our bedroom, not knowing when the rain might end, nor if the paint would hold...Andy and I slept on the futon in the living room.

A few hours later, I checked back in on the bedroom.

the water drop had made almost a foot of progress!

I'd love to say that the neighbors were again attempting to flood us out. Seeing as the bathroom tactic failed. However, I really don't see how leaving your air conditioning unit in the wall one floor above us has much to do with the water that seeped down into our bedroom...even if it was the very same wall.

As could be expected, Mr. M showed up two days later than he said he would....and then said "Let's wait until it drys, and then we'll fix it."

One week later...

Tonight it rains again. I hope I don't drown by tomorrow.

When at first you don't succeed...

I was in bed early last night, trying to fight off a cold.

Shortly after 10pm, I was stirred from my bed by the doorbell.

Our neighbors rang to tell me that their sink had overflowed and flooded their bathroom. Were we effected?

I turned to see the water traipsing down from the ceiling as the first of several drops landed on my nighttime sweatshirt. I nodded a firm YES. Yes, we were effected.

As I was drying up the puddles and changing my pjs, I thought: The hippies are going to flush us out of this apartment come hell or high water! (High water clearly being their optimal choice.)

The sky has opened

Some of you may wonder...what next?

What happened with the bathroom ceiling?

It came out.

No, don't worry, it didn't fall on my head. Thank god! But, our landlord did come by last Monday and "fix" the leak. By "fix the leak", I mean he pulled out a chunk of our ceiling and peeled back a bit more of the paint to let it all dry out. He moved all our toiletries about, stacked our trash cans (used to catch leaking water) inside one another like some kind of modern totem pole and placed mop and broom outside the apartment in the hallway. Our bathmat seems to have disappeared during the remodeling.

Funny thing is, our landlord (I'll rename him Mr. M. The "M" stands for "Mystery Man"), Mr. M did not leave a note behind, he didn't call us with an update, and in the end I called him on Tuesday night (leaving ample time for him to call me) to find out our status on the new sunroof he installed (destalled?).


We lived like this, the ceiling wide open wondering if the hippies were peering down upon us, for a full week. Mr. M wanted to be sure everything dried out completely and keep an eye out for any further leakage.

There was no further leakage. But I'm not so sure there wasn't any peakage. (Bu-dum-bump!)

We went to D.C. this last weekend, reporting to Mr. M that there were no further rain showers in our bathroom that we noticed. He swooped in (mystery man that he is) and completed the job and by Sunday night we had a mostly repaired ceiling. (No picture available.) By mostly, I mean that for some reason he didn't cover the whole ceiling and some of the ceiling still has remnants of yellowing coffee-like stains mixed in. I think Mr. M was going for the antique look.

Not that I'm complaining! I love antiques. And, it is also very good to have a dry roof over our heads again. Thank you, Mr. M.

Now, if only someone could tell me...where is our bathmat?

Raindrops keeping falling

We have hippie neighbors. They live upstairs in the split family home. It's us and them. We live downstairs. Most everything our hippie neighbors do makes some kind of hippie-sense. Like saving every plastic container ever given to them. Taking EVERYTHING to the thrift store, or hoarding it in their house where they'll sell the parts or give them away on freecycle.com. Eating everything grown in their own garden, including the flowers of the plants which they are not sure, but they THINK is a hybrid of broccoli and celery. Or was it scallions? At any rate, all of this is fairly normal in the hippie way of life.

And it makes sense. And I get it. I'm even a little envious that I am too attached to my materialistic-comforts-of-home lifestyle to eat from my own garden. (I did try the mystery flower, though. It tasted kinda like broccoli.)

It gets to be too much for me, their neighbor, to handle at this point - I'm in the bathroom on the toilet...and I feel raindrops. Oh wait. No, that's not raindrops. That's foul coffee-colored liquid dripping from my ceiling. The drips continue for weeks. We call the landlord. He regrouts their tub. The drips start again, this time accompanied by nice huge swells in the ceiling. Just threatening to pour down on me like a looming Florida storm cloud. I call the landlord. He calls the neighbors.

This is key.

While a puss-like bulge is growing in my ceiling, the neighbors are "taking a shower," they tell Matt, the landlord, "without closing the shower curtain."

What?! Who DOES that? There is a point to the shower curtain, right? I mean, who wants to take a shower and then step out into a bath? How much mold and filth must there be on their bathroom floor and walls? I'm astounded.

Automatically, I try to equate this to hippie logic. There is none. There is no reason to subject your own floor and your neighbor's ceiling to a diluge of coffee, mildew, sewage baths. The picture you see above is about 8 hours before the bubble gave out and my nice, clean bathroom was washed in rust water. Or, at least, as I tried to salvage my bathroom, I was washed in rust water.

And then Andy came back from vacation.