My Rainstorm
It all started with single drops, plopping down heavily on my windowsill in a steady, pulssing rhythm. That is what woke me up this morning at 6am. I put a plastic container underneath the dripping place, with a papertowel on the bottom of it to soften the drops so that I could go back to sleep. It was hard to get back to sleep because I continued to listened to the dripping, only a couple of feet away from my bed, right across from my head. As I was drifting off, the dripping got louder again... was my paper towel silencer not working? I got up. Turned on the lights, for it was still dark this early on a cloudy morning. The paper towel was softening those drops, but there was another places that was dripping now as well, making a puddle on my windowsill. It was now 7am. I pulled up a chair from the kitchen to get up on and inspect where the dripping was coming from. It was inside the window box, up in the top part of it where the glass pane meets the wall. The dripping was coming from that crack between the glass and the wall. I wiped off the windowsill and the windowceiling too and watched if it would leak again. Of course it did. What could I do? I covered the windowsill with old towels that I use for rags and lay back down, listening to dripping, which started to pick up. In a matter of minutes, the dripping spread across the width of the window, dripping down persistently. As the drops hit the towel on the windowsill, they splattered in all directions, wetting the floor and the edge of my nightstand. I rung out the rags which were soaked with water and placed them back. By about 7:30am it was coming down like a rather heavy rain inside my window. The floor was soaked, so were my blinds and curtains. I was beginning to panic at this point. And yet it was still early on a Saturday morning and I felt bad calling my land lord or my parents. But I decided to straighten up a few things in my apartment so that it wasn't a complete mess and call my landlord up. By the time I got down to the landlord's door, it was 8am. The landlady answered in her pajamas and informed me that the landlord himself is at work already, but she'll call him. Another half an hour later she showed up, dressed this time, with an armful of towels and one of those trophs that you would put flowers into in a windowbox and we covered the area with the towels and then put the troph on the windowsill. She left. The rain continued.
May be this is a good time to mention that it wasn't in fact raining or snowing outside. There were no percipitations of any kind actually coming down outside my window, only inside.
The landlady showed up abother another hour later with a sheet of plastic and we tacked it all around the window preventing the water from splattering all over the floor and my stuff anymore. The rain continued and the landlord remained at work. She spoke to him on the phone and their theory was such: there is a drainage pipe running in that corner of the house by my window. It may have frozen overnight and now all the melting snow from the roof is finding other places to go, like into my window and that as soon as the ice in the pipe melts, things should get back to normal. I suppose they were right because by about 11am the rain stopped. Outside it was sunny and warm and finally, so was inside. The landlady came by to check on me and said that whenever I get to cleaning it all up, I can just come down and bring her towels back. I left things up for a while longer. At 3pm I took everthing down, mopped up and surveyed the damage: the sides of the window pane had deep gaping cracks in them and the windowsill paint had bubbled up from the water. Sigh. Well, it's not for me to fix.
The landlord is supposed to come by tomorrow to check it out, as well as my dripping toilet. But don't worry, the toilet isn't dripping on the floor, just into the bowl.
I am exhausted already and it's not even six yet.
May be this is a good time to mention that it wasn't in fact raining or snowing outside. There were no percipitations of any kind actually coming down outside my window, only inside.
The landlady showed up abother another hour later with a sheet of plastic and we tacked it all around the window preventing the water from splattering all over the floor and my stuff anymore. The rain continued and the landlord remained at work. She spoke to him on the phone and their theory was such: there is a drainage pipe running in that corner of the house by my window. It may have frozen overnight and now all the melting snow from the roof is finding other places to go, like into my window and that as soon as the ice in the pipe melts, things should get back to normal. I suppose they were right because by about 11am the rain stopped. Outside it was sunny and warm and finally, so was inside. The landlady came by to check on me and said that whenever I get to cleaning it all up, I can just come down and bring her towels back. I left things up for a while longer. At 3pm I took everthing down, mopped up and surveyed the damage: the sides of the window pane had deep gaping cracks in them and the windowsill paint had bubbled up from the water. Sigh. Well, it's not for me to fix.
The landlord is supposed to come by tomorrow to check it out, as well as my dripping toilet. But don't worry, the toilet isn't dripping on the floor, just into the bowl.
I am exhausted already and it's not even six yet.