The Great Flood of '07!!
So there I was, slumbering peacefully in my fluffy bed, nuzzled up with my stuffed polar bear tucked safely under my chin..... when I was suddenly rudely awoken by the utterly disorienting sound of a mad rush of water originating from somewhere in the vicinity of my bathroom. In great confusion I lay there for some moments, pondering this bizarre and incomprehensible development, thinking, "What is that? What could possibly be making that noise?"
The realization hits me like hefty bag full of russet potatos (is that spelled with or without an 'e'? Like tomatoes?), and I leap out of bed, tripping over Jake-dog who had already wandered over to investigate for himself. To my utter dismay, in the time that had elapsed since I first drowsily recognized the sound of multiple gallons of water making their way by force of gravity and grace of god from some mysterious place upstairs in the aether into MY unassuming bathroom, my ENTIRE FLOOR IS AN INCH DEEP IN WATER, and it was still coming. I stand there and stare in shock as I watch literally BUCKETS of water stream out of my ventilation duct, having come down with such great initial force that it had knocked the entire fan fixture out of the ceiling.
Shaking myself out of my sleep-addled stupor I start grabbing towels and clothes out of the hamper to stem the flow, creating a fluffy barricade at the door to keep it from flowing into my adjoining, carpeted, walk-in closet. But as I do that, my sensitive, panicked little ears pick up the tell-tale drip-drip-dripdripdripdrip of more water coming from the other side of the apartment, and I throw everything down and run out to find ANOTHER leak, coming down in a somewhat more modest dribble, in Rob's bathroom. At this point I am completely baffled. I have a very June Cleaver moment of wringing my hands and saying, "Oh, my," at a loss for what rational people do when water is magically springing in biblical fashion from multiple ceiling fixtures.
Finally, my left brain (much betrayed by the lack of caffeine and the unnatural request for functionality at this particular hour of the day) kicks in, and I run to the hall closet and pull out all the buckets we have and start laying them about. I put the largest one (3 gallons) in my bathroom first, and to give you an idea of how fast the water was coming down, by the time I had put the other bucket in place and had grabbed a mop and come back, the bucket in my bathroom was already a third of the way full. Thinking that I had solved the problem enough to consider my next course of action, I of course hear MORE quiet dripping, and see that the water is also coming down from the actual LIGHT fixture, more from around the door frame of my bathroom, and even some from the door frame of my closet, as well. We're out of buckets, and quickly approaching the same state of affairs in towels.
I take a moment to briefly survey the damage, and then prepare to take my beef out onto the streets, yo. I walk outside with the peaceable intention of knocking down a door or two and having a conversation fistwise with the as-yet-un-met upstairs neighbors, who surely are the root of this, and all other, evils. To my surprise, as I start walking up the stairs to head up there, I meet a very damp and unhappy looking fellow trundling out of the offending apartment, carrying a giant shop-vac basin full of water. I allow him to pass me unhindered, since he was clearly occupied with emptying the basin into the nearby bushes, but I accosted him as he returned. And of course, gracefully, my powers of intelligible communication apparently on strike, I declare to him in the only words that came, "Water. It's everywhere. My bathroom, down here...There's.. It's.. WATER. ALL OVER." I gestured appropriately to indicate the magnitude of the cataclysm. His look of dismay was somewhat gratifying, and though he didn’t actually utter the ever appropriate, “Ay, carumba!” within my hearing, I knew that’s what he was thinking.
Happily our mutual broken English (mine by default of awakening to this growing horror, his by default of… well… language) didn’t hinder us entirely from sorting out the facts of the situation. Namely that he had been fixing [something] upstairs and had accidentally broken [something else] which had caused water to flow and back up in some mysterious fashion that resulted in mini-Niagara a-la #D49. He promised to be down in short order to do what he could to rectify the situation, and I returned to start mopping up what I could.
Two bucketfuls of brackish water later, I decided I’d make the best of the situation (hopefully mitigating whatever awful mildewy or worse smell was surely waiting to arise from having my bathroom soaking in not-quite-brown-but-on-its-way-there water) and sprayed half of our remaining bottle of Simple Green on the floor into the somewhat shrunken puddle. At this point the not-very-handy man came down and rang the doorbell, apologizing profusely. I showed him where all the damage was, and he set about mopping up the rest of the water in my bathroom as I tended to the other less serious flows. He explained to me again, and I got more of the picture, that he had been working on laying out the laminate in the upstairs bathroom, and had accidentally knocked a bracket or something off the sink. Don’t ask me how. I didn’t ask. And I also didn’t ask why, despite having left a note earlier in the week to let the building know he’d be turning the water off this morning so he could do his work, he clearly HADN’T turned the water off, thereby directly causing the ensuing clusterfuck. I figured he seemed to feel badly enough about it already.
But it was at this point that he also told me that, hey, what a coincidence, he had JUST been in my apartment, the month before, painting and doing the fixtures! No, really? I say. So you’re the brain trust who painted completely over our fuse box (which we had had to crack open with a knife), failed to paint large portions of the walls, removed the cable face-plate and forgot to put it back on, AND painted my bathroom door AND the doorknob mechanism so that once I closed it I couldn’t get OUT of my bathroom the first night and had to have Rob come bust me out? Oh, you’re THAT guy? What a coincidence indeed! Of course, I didn’t actually say any of that to him. But, really. I mean, jeeze.
There came another knock at the door and I go out to find the neighbor from upstairs herself, come to see the damage. She was really nice about it all too, and we lamented over having met under such terrible circumstances. She conversed with the handy-dude in Spanish a bit, and then told me that someone had parked in the space that directly blocked the water shut-off, and had in fact parked so close to it that there was no room to get between the bumper and the valve, so they couldn’t turn the water off for the work this morning. The handyman had decided it wouldn’t be a problem to leave it on. Hmm. At any rate they both apologized repeatedly, and the handyman said he’d return on Saturday after the water dries to repaint my ceiling and fix the fan. I’m dubious that he’ll actually leave anything BETTER in his wake, but I appreciate the sentiment.
And now, exhausted as I am, I shall retire and try to catch a bit of a nap, because I seriously feel hung over with the sleepies. Ugh. And I figure with all the laundry and residual mopping I have to look forward to when I wake up, I deserve a pre-emptive break. Anyway, thus goes the saga of Floodgate 2007. Updates will be available on CNN.
The realization hits me like hefty bag full of russet potatos (is that spelled with or without an 'e'? Like tomatoes?), and I leap out of bed, tripping over Jake-dog who had already wandered over to investigate for himself. To my utter dismay, in the time that had elapsed since I first drowsily recognized the sound of multiple gallons of water making their way by force of gravity and grace of god from some mysterious place upstairs in the aether into MY unassuming bathroom, my ENTIRE FLOOR IS AN INCH DEEP IN WATER, and it was still coming. I stand there and stare in shock as I watch literally BUCKETS of water stream out of my ventilation duct, having come down with such great initial force that it had knocked the entire fan fixture out of the ceiling.
Shaking myself out of my sleep-addled stupor I start grabbing towels and clothes out of the hamper to stem the flow, creating a fluffy barricade at the door to keep it from flowing into my adjoining, carpeted, walk-in closet. But as I do that, my sensitive, panicked little ears pick up the tell-tale drip-drip-dripdripdripdrip of more water coming from the other side of the apartment, and I throw everything down and run out to find ANOTHER leak, coming down in a somewhat more modest dribble, in Rob's bathroom. At this point I am completely baffled. I have a very June Cleaver moment of wringing my hands and saying, "Oh, my," at a loss for what rational people do when water is magically springing in biblical fashion from multiple ceiling fixtures.
Finally, my left brain (much betrayed by the lack of caffeine and the unnatural request for functionality at this particular hour of the day) kicks in, and I run to the hall closet and pull out all the buckets we have and start laying them about. I put the largest one (3 gallons) in my bathroom first, and to give you an idea of how fast the water was coming down, by the time I had put the other bucket in place and had grabbed a mop and come back, the bucket in my bathroom was already a third of the way full. Thinking that I had solved the problem enough to consider my next course of action, I of course hear MORE quiet dripping, and see that the water is also coming down from the actual LIGHT fixture, more from around the door frame of my bathroom, and even some from the door frame of my closet, as well. We're out of buckets, and quickly approaching the same state of affairs in towels.
I take a moment to briefly survey the damage, and then prepare to take my beef out onto the streets, yo. I walk outside with the peaceable intention of knocking down a door or two and having a conversation fistwise with the as-yet-un-met upstairs neighbors, who surely are the root of this, and all other, evils. To my surprise, as I start walking up the stairs to head up there, I meet a very damp and unhappy looking fellow trundling out of the offending apartment, carrying a giant shop-vac basin full of water. I allow him to pass me unhindered, since he was clearly occupied with emptying the basin into the nearby bushes, but I accosted him as he returned. And of course, gracefully, my powers of intelligible communication apparently on strike, I declare to him in the only words that came, "Water. It's everywhere. My bathroom, down here...There's.. It's.. WATER. ALL OVER." I gestured appropriately to indicate the magnitude of the cataclysm. His look of dismay was somewhat gratifying, and though he didn’t actually utter the ever appropriate, “Ay, carumba!” within my hearing, I knew that’s what he was thinking.
Happily our mutual broken English (mine by default of awakening to this growing horror, his by default of… well… language) didn’t hinder us entirely from sorting out the facts of the situation. Namely that he had been fixing [something] upstairs and had accidentally broken [something else] which had caused water to flow and back up in some mysterious fashion that resulted in mini-Niagara a-la #D49. He promised to be down in short order to do what he could to rectify the situation, and I returned to start mopping up what I could.
Two bucketfuls of brackish water later, I decided I’d make the best of the situation (hopefully mitigating whatever awful mildewy or worse smell was surely waiting to arise from having my bathroom soaking in not-quite-brown-but-on-its-way-there water) and sprayed half of our remaining bottle of Simple Green on the floor into the somewhat shrunken puddle. At this point the not-very-handy man came down and rang the doorbell, apologizing profusely. I showed him where all the damage was, and he set about mopping up the rest of the water in my bathroom as I tended to the other less serious flows. He explained to me again, and I got more of the picture, that he had been working on laying out the laminate in the upstairs bathroom, and had accidentally knocked a bracket or something off the sink. Don’t ask me how. I didn’t ask. And I also didn’t ask why, despite having left a note earlier in the week to let the building know he’d be turning the water off this morning so he could do his work, he clearly HADN’T turned the water off, thereby directly causing the ensuing clusterfuck. I figured he seemed to feel badly enough about it already.
But it was at this point that he also told me that, hey, what a coincidence, he had JUST been in my apartment, the month before, painting and doing the fixtures! No, really? I say. So you’re the brain trust who painted completely over our fuse box (which we had had to crack open with a knife), failed to paint large portions of the walls, removed the cable face-plate and forgot to put it back on, AND painted my bathroom door AND the doorknob mechanism so that once I closed it I couldn’t get OUT of my bathroom the first night and had to have Rob come bust me out? Oh, you’re THAT guy? What a coincidence indeed! Of course, I didn’t actually say any of that to him. But, really. I mean, jeeze.
There came another knock at the door and I go out to find the neighbor from upstairs herself, come to see the damage. She was really nice about it all too, and we lamented over having met under such terrible circumstances. She conversed with the handy-dude in Spanish a bit, and then told me that someone had parked in the space that directly blocked the water shut-off, and had in fact parked so close to it that there was no room to get between the bumper and the valve, so they couldn’t turn the water off for the work this morning. The handyman had decided it wouldn’t be a problem to leave it on. Hmm. At any rate they both apologized repeatedly, and the handyman said he’d return on Saturday after the water dries to repaint my ceiling and fix the fan. I’m dubious that he’ll actually leave anything BETTER in his wake, but I appreciate the sentiment.
And now, exhausted as I am, I shall retire and try to catch a bit of a nap, because I seriously feel hung over with the sleepies. Ugh. And I figure with all the laundry and residual mopping I have to look forward to when I wake up, I deserve a pre-emptive break. Anyway, thus goes the saga of Floodgate 2007. Updates will be available on CNN.